“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
WHEN Harry and Meghan announced to the world that they were stepping back from royal duties, it shocked the world. Most people want to be royalty, they want to think that royalty is breeding, culture, wealth and fame. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
Look at history. Some of the shallowest people had royal blood, some of the most cruel had royal blood in their veins. Royalty does not mean royalty because you may have the manners and the protocol and even the wealth for it but there are royals who have acted worse than peasants. Still people look up to them and pressure upon them is heavy. Some have sacrificed their happiness for fame. Others have given up their dreams for the dreams of others. Not so with Harry and Meghan and that I admire.
It is not easy to do that. It is not easy to give up fame, wealth, adulation and whatever trappings privileged people are born into. But it has its price and the price may be more costly than all what we admire. And the couple had had enough of it and they wanted to live their own lives, dream their own dreams. They did not want to fall subservient to the whims of office and position.
According to one British publication, the couple lost their rank and were ordered to stop HRH, they had to repay taxpayers the amount used for their cottage, and step down from all royal duties. That was the price. When you think of that, it was all position and money things.
It is not easy to take the difficult road. The difficult road demands the strength of one’s dreams, the sacrifice of one’s character and the courage of one’s heart. All the more the challenge becomes greater when one goes against the family. But it is worth it simply because what is at stake here is the worthiness and the meaning of one’s life. They had the courage and the strength to go their own way and that makes them royal.
Most people would rather hang on to their despair while hanging on to their positions. Most people would embrace the dreariness for the rank. Most people would live in nothingness instead of taking the challenge to be true to one’s self.
Perhaps it was a certain French designer who said it best. “Everyone marries the Duke of Westminster. There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel.”
And there is only one you.