Monday, December 26, 2022

I Didn’t Choose to be Born. I Choose How I’ll Live My Life

 

Christmas has come and gone and the question of life is probably one worth asking. Are we, like the “Savior” destined to live a purpose chosen for us by a higher power or do we have a certain amount of choice in how we live that life?

One of the most interesting examples of how this commonly asked philosophical question is being played out, can be found in the United Kingdom (UK). That example is the current dispute between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the rest of the Royal Family. The Duke and Duchess have just released their “documentary” on Netflix that revealed things that the family would rather not have been revealed and the duke’s book “Spare” is expected soon, revealing even more things the royals would rather not be revealed.

 


 Copyright CNN – Ginger Lad becomes Whinger-Ginger

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have managed to get a flurry of headlines written on both sides of the Atlantic and talk show hosts have had material gifted to them. The political right sees the Duke and Duchess as betraying the Royal Family and the rest of the United Kingdom. The “woke” left, particularly in the USA think of this pair as exposing the “racism” in this “outdated” institution.

Many things are being said but there is one thing that is very clear. Life in the Royal Family is the opposite of fun. Sure, they have privileges that the rest of us can only dream of. Nobody in the family is in danger of starving nor being homeless. Things like a “cost of living” crisis don’t affect the royals.

However, there is a trade-off. The day you enter the family, you become public property. The press trails your every move and the public expects you, the royal, to be visible 24/7. Royals do not have “freedom” of speech that ordinary people have. Voice anything that can be conceived as an opinion on anything more serious than the spikes of a hedgehog and everyone will jump on you for “interfering” in the democratic process. Royals go where the public expect them to go and are obliged to see people that they may not want to look at on a regular basis. It’s not a life for everyone. The late Queen did it well, and what she did was considered “service.” However, she seemed to be an exception.

This was the life that the Duke of Sussex was born into. What makes this life particularly hard for someone like him is the fact that through no fault of his own, he was destined to be in that life forever. His brother is destined to take the top job and unless his older brother does something like his great-granduncle, the duke will effectively not be able to do much else other than what other people decided for him.

Then, there is the fact that the poor guy must have had a lousy family environment. His parents spent the better part of their marriage snipping at each other in the public domain and then his mother died when he was still young and his father married the woman that his mother publicly condemned as the cause of the break up of their marriage. This is what most would call the text book screwed up childhood.

However, whilst nobody denies that the Duke of Sussex must have had a traumatic childhood, its hard to argue that he’s a sympathetic character fighting against an evil institution in an evil country.

If anything, the Duke and Duchess come across as complainers. They left their role in senior working royals on 8 January 2020 in the now famous “Megxit,” because they wanted their privacy and to be financially independent. However, since leaving Royal Family, the Duke and Duchess have been aggressively courting publicity in America to complain that they were not getting money from the Crown and their children were not getting titles. Instead of coming across as victims, they are coming across as spoilt brats who expect all the benefits of royalty without the tradeoff. Its not like the Japanese Princess who married a commoner she loved and gave up the privileges of the Imperial House.

It is a shame, particularly for the duke, who once a happy character much loved by the British public. If anything, the duke’s newfound career as a bitch for cable TV is a waste. The man was actually born to as close as having his cake and eating it as possible. As the second son, his chances of being king were remote and he was in the position of having the perks of royalty without the responsibilities as far as it was possible.

His example was ironically his father, who spent 70 odd years without an official “job.” Instead of going onto TV to whine about how screwed up his life, the man, proceeded to find his own purpose, using his immense privilege and wealth to create projects like the Princess Trust, which has helped hundreds of thousands of “disadvantaged” youth as mentioned in the following report from Reuters:

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/with-charles-king-his-princes-trust-youth-charity-goes-2022-09-16/

Harry, Duke of Sussex was on a similar path. He set up the Invictus Games for disabled athletes. Like his father, the duke could have spent his life using his position and wealth to champion causes that were important to him. He could have chosen to use the privileges he was born into to do good – think about it, so many of us have causes we care about in our youth but abandon them as the dreary need to make a living takes over. He could have done something most of us can only dream of. Its such a shame he chose to campaign against his choice to sacrifice the privilege he was born into instead of using it to build a legacy.  

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Maira Gall