Some things get better with wear: old shoes, old friendships, and old books.
Especially old books. A new volume arrives with crisp corners and a spine that hasn’t yet learned to bend. An old one has been somewhere. It has traveled through time in the hands of people who may no longer be around to tell us what they found inside.
And there it is: a whole philosophy of life tucked into a nursery exchange.
We spend enormous energy trying not to get worn out. We polish the outside, protect our reputations, keep our vulnerabilities under wraps, and work overtime to look capable, current, and unruffled. We like our moving parts to work, our paint to shine, and we'd much rather not be dropped.
The trouble is that a life lived entirely inside the original packaging isn’t much of a life. Margery Williams understood this long before we began measuring ourselves in metrics, titles, and the relentless scoreboards in our heads.
The Skin Horse’s coat is worn thin and his tail has come unstitched. He’s not the sort of toy that turns heads in the nursery, but he knows something the shiny newcomers don’t: life leaves marks, and love leaves marks, too. You cannot show up for people, risk disappointment, lose what matters, begin again, and expect to emerge looking as though nothing happened.
The worn places aren’t where life went wrong. They are where life got in.
I think about Don when I read this passage. He is in his nineties now—an age when the world becomes overly preoccupied with what a person can no longer do. The body slows down, things creak, and the calendar collects its dues. But a person is not a machine being audited for continued utility, and getting older is not the same as becoming obsolete.
There is an enormous difference between wearing out and being used up by the things that matter. One is a mere loss of function; the other is fulfillment. Curiosity, deep conversation, community, and the willingness to keep caring even when caring costs you something—these things don’t leave us untouched.
The Skin Horse knows that becoming Real makes you shabby, but that those who understand will never see you as ugly. That is the truth I keep turning over. We live in a culture exceptionally good at replacing and upgrading, but clumsy at recognizing what becomes priceless only through time.
A friendship deepens through hard conversations and awkward phone calls when neither person knows what to say. A life deepens when we realize that vulnerability isn’t a defect in the design; it is the design. It means risking the scuffed corners and understanding that perfection and wholeness are two entirely different things.
When the rabbit asks what happens once you are Real, the Skin Horse answers that it lasts: “Once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
I love that reassurance. Not because it promises bodies won’t decline, or people won’t leave us, but because love leaves an indelible imprint—a way of seeing, a generosity passed along, a quiet standard for how to treat people.
That is what legacy actually is. Not the titles we accumulated or how long we kept our paint from chipping, but what remains in the people we touched.
When we are young, we want to know how to stand out. Later on, we want to know how to hold on. If we are fortunate, we eventually learn to ask the better question: How do we live so that love leaves its mark?
It doesn’t require a grand gesture. It’s usually as quiet as listening a little longer, staying curious, speaking the truth kindly, and refusing to apologize for the wear and tear. The scuffed places tell the story. Sometimes the oldest, shabbiest presence in the room understands the most.
Don’s book sits on my desk, worn, dog-eared, and deeply loved.
Some things get better with wear. Some things become Real. And the best things stay with us long after the story ends.
I’m Patrick Ball. Stay curious and ask better questions. See you - On the Fly.
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