Careful, Dear Readers – if you don’t stop rolling your eyes, Meghan will send you off for an early gong bath.
Now here’s the thing that might surprise you; I meditate. In fact, I learnt virtually the self same meditation that 40-year-old Meghan has practised for years. It has different names; her (and now presumably his) technique is called vedic meditation.
Mine is known as transcendental meditation and it really is bloody brilliant. It relaxes my body, soothes my spirit and I would thoroughly recommend it.
But here’s the thing; as a mother, a wife and full-time employee, I can barely cobble together 45 minutes a week, much less 45 minutes every day to “work” on myself.
And when I do find a wormhole in the space-time continuum, I don’t bang on about it like I’ve discovered a whole new dimension. In fact (although this is against the rules) I do it lying down and usually segue straight into a restorative little snooze.
Harry would not approve, not least because he’s banging the personal meditation drum in order to flog his latest new virtuous venture – and nodding off al desko probably isn’t the sales pitch he’s aiming for.
He’s just a prince, standing in front of a Zoom screen asking to be taken seriously. And “seriously” is the byword here.
To those of us on this side of the Atlantic, there is something agonisingly earnest about the Californian celebrity culture with its solipsistic emphasis on self love, self improvement and self actualisation, whatever that means.
Fine for Meghan. These are her people. But Harry wasn’t born into wheatgrass smoothies and virtue signalling any more than she was born into draughty country piles and jaunty sarcasm.
And so when he goes on about meditation and spouts things like: “I allot half an hour or 45 minutes in the morning when one kid has gone to school and the other is having a nap; there’s a break in our programme,” our response isn’t “Well done you”.
Our first thought is: “Wait? You have a programme? Meghan sets you a joint programme? We’re firing up your old Apache helicopter and bringing you home, son! Blink twice if you can reach the perimeter fence before sunrise.”
But of course he’s not coming back; he’s been converted to clean living in his £10 million Montecito comfort zone. We’d wish him well, if only this twinkle-free version of Harry didn’t make us feel quite so uncomfortable.
