Every day he strives for “mental fitness”
Speaking of oversharing and related issues…poor old Hazza is becoming such a joke. It’s a funny joke though, so I’m not complaining.
I see from his latest video that Prince Harry, living in California, is now fluent in Peloton, or at least some kind of Yoga-with-Adrienne-style “mental toolbox” iterative blah. Speaking from beneath a sprig of newly farmed carrot hair with a panel of sculpted execs, the prince explained in an interview on Thursday for his wellness app how he dealt with the extreme mental burden of living in a $14 million mansion with 16 loos.
Every day he strives for “mental fitness”. He will try to find a “slate of white space” after the school run. “I now put in half an hour or 45 minutes in the morning when one of the kids has gone to school and the other is taking a nap,” he said.
Ah yes, he “puts in” that 30 to 45 minutes – sweating at the coal face.
How does he think it looks to claim he has suffered from “burnout” when the most stressful thing he now experiences is probably the occasional subpar morning affirmation and not-quite-right American-style grass? Burnout from what, anyway? From taking four private jets a week? From his wife? Everything he says assumes poor mental health is the default, which is, in itself, mad.
Burnout from being absurd, maybe?
I wonder what the Kween herself is thinking as she watches Harry’s latest attempt to dress up navel-gazing as “boldly committing to inner work”. Today is the beginning of her Platinum Jubilee — or, as one run of souvenir crockery hilariously misspelt it, her “Platinum Jubbly”.
As a woman who specialises in sincere, short and savagely to-the-point haikus — “recollections may vary” — she must look at Harry with his sprawling, meaningless bromides and wonder what has gone wrong in the past 70 years.
To be fair, that’s the other end of the spectrum as opposed to a happy or sensible or compromise middle. There’s excessive navel gazing on the one hand and there’s not looking behind the curtains at all ever on the other hand.
Harry claims he is now so mentally fragile that he needs to surround himself with “people who I would happily have washing the [mental] windscreen”. Charles, of course, calls such people “valets”. I find it interesting that nearly everything Harry speaks about involves not what he can do for others but what others can do for him.
That’s the thing. So many people confuse “thinking” with “thinking about the self.” There’s an infinite supply of things to think about that are not the self. Bonus: doing that tends to put the self in perspective, at least a little. You get your “the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world” from directing your attention out instead of in, and that’s a good thing.
Being born a Royal isn’t what I’d recommend for general sanity. But Prince Harry, who seems to have inherited the wooness of his mother and the self-pity of his father (assuming the Prince of Wales is his father), has doubled/tripled/quadrupled that by marrying a Californian, nay a Hollywooder with all the self-absorption and self -publicity implied thereof.
This guy needs up to 45 minutes of downtime after dropping off a single kid at school, and he can easily take that time because he has no need to work. My mind drifts off to my upbringing, with a single parent and a long commute due to the dictates of work and school. We’d leave the house at something like 7 or 7:30, and not get back til after dark. This guy is just too out of touch with normal life to have even an inkling about how out of touch he is. He even leaves Gwyneth Paltrow in his dust.
They should make Gwyneth Paltrow their lady in waiting or something.
I suspect that based on relative wealth, Harry would be Gywneth’s butler.
Oh but it’s not based on that it’s based on the magic of Hereditary Monarchy and all that it entails. It makes every bit as much sense as Goop.
Yeah, but Harry’s been cast out and Gwyneth is the queen of goop.
This line really stood out. While I am sure there are mental stresses of being rich your whole life, try growing up in a house with only one “loo” – and 10 people. That is threatening to fall down over your head. Where you race upstairs at night bundled up in a long nightgown and slip under thin covers and lie there trying to get to sleep but you’re so cold you sleep in a tight bundle so you don’t accidentally move off the spot you’ve warmed.
Get real, Harry. None of us really give a damn about you.
Total win.
Come, seriously, since renouncing his inheritance as #13 in line for the Crown, I think he has a tough go at living with the Common People. He now has to direct people to purchase things for the household. He needs to order someone to find for him a proper polo grounds. It’s all taxing.
In the old days, the 2nd son had the fun of plotting his brother’s murder. He doesn’t get to do that, so here he is, sweating to the oldies.
I probably have a more sympathetic view of the monarchy than most here, but this irks me, too.
The “deal” is, you’re born into this family, you get incredible wealth and privilege and admiration, and with it comes some shit in the form of scrutiny and diminished privacy and animosity, and some limited public duties.
Of course, none of us gets to choose which family we’re born into, so it’s not really a “deal” in that sense. It seems right to give people a chance to “opt out” of that deal. They’ll still have gotten the benefits up to that point, but nothing can be done about that.
What’s irritating about Harry is that he wants to have all the upside and none of the downside. If he just wanted to slide into obscurity and live a quiet life as the loving husband of an actress and devoted father, then I would wish him well. But that’s not what he’s doing. He doesn’t want the public duties, bitches and moans about the scrutiny and criticism, but he still wants to be fucking famous for no reason other than who his grandmother is, and exploit that fame for money. So guess what, pal — you’re going to get all the scrutiny and criticism after all, and nobody’s going to feel sorry for you, because you were offered a way out and chose not to take it.
I do have a somewhat sympathetic view of the royals themselves, because the thing about that deal is that you really can’t opt out of it if you’re in the line of succession in a low enough number. You can physically, but morally and psychologically it must be all but impossible. It’s all because of David, aka the Duke of Windsor, who ignored his “duty” in such a hideously selfish and frivolous way. The descendants of the next in line, who got it all dumped on his shoulders without having been raised to do it, feel VERY STRONGLY about it. The rewards are massive, but for that small cohort there really is effectively no choice about what you do with your life.
And Harry of course is not in that small number – there are now too many in the direct line for him to be at any real risk of being made king. William does his rescue pilot work and his royal Duty, and Harry scarpers and then moans and complains. It is all rather revolting.
I agree with that. I can even sympathize with Prince Charles for being in the odd position of spending his whole life preparing for a job he will only get when his mother dies. I think it’s rather distasteful when people mock him for still being a king-in-waiting — what’s he supposed to do, have her murdered? – especially since there are so many legitimate things to mock him for.