Brief observations on a family row

I have no intention of watching the interview, but the headlines are almost impossible to ignore. So rather than focus on Harry and Meghan, I only offer a few brief and far from comprehensive observations (or truisms, if you care to think of them that way) about human behaviour, based on my own experience, that arise out of the rumpus.

First, the more rule-bound a culture, the harder it is for an outsider with little understanding of that culture to integrate themselves.

Second, the implicit rules of a culture are far harder for an outsider to grasp or embrace than the explicit ones.

Third, we each have our own reality. You don’t have to be poor and downtrodden to be deprived of basic needs. Lack of sympathy on the grounds of their wealth and privilege for those who experience mental pain is often the result of envy and disappointment in the eye of the beholder.

Fourth, if, for whatever reason, you are sensitive to insult, you will find it whether or not it was intended.

Fifth, there is no such thing as a functional family, because there are no universal rules that define what functional means. Every family, in one way or another, is dysfunctional.

Sixth, words once said can’t be unsaid. However, they can be forgotten or cease to be meaningful.

Seventh, the older you are the less interesting you become. Such is public obsession with (relative) youth that if a couple like Meghan and Harry had given the same interview in their fifties or sixties few people would have paid a blind bit of notice.

Finally, misfortunes are often like heirlooms. They are handed down from generation to generation. What changes is not so much the heirloom, but what it means to those who inherit it.

End of story. At least as far as I’m concerned.