Being Of Service
Several hundred thousand people queuing over 10 hours to pay their respect to someone who most probably had very little practical impact on their life. What's going on?
It did cross my mind that it was just the largest rubbernecking event in the world, but it didn’t add-up with the limited attention-span and need for selfie opportunity that come with a simply voyeuristic audience.
Although the situation might be exacerbated by the recent Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, there is an underlying feeling that we are witnessing history. Of course, Queen Elizabeth II will be remembered in history books as the longest standing monarch, a women that was crowned at a time when men like Staline and Churchill were in office. In France, the president was Vincent Auriol, (a man so forgotten by history that I had to look him up), it was another era, literally a whole lifetime ago. This might be part of the explanation but not all of it.
French people don’t have much love lost for a monarchy, yet lately it’s been hard to ignore the lack of unity in France. Political views are divided to the point of being splintered. Politics is plagued by populism and the masses by cynicism, the times are changing, heading for turbulence and the ship’s figurehead is all but missing.
So whilst politicians have been focusing on the next election, football managers getting fired after a few bad matches, and employees seemingly forced to chose between jumping ship every few years and quiet quitting, someone quietly stood as a figurehead, maybe voiceless but always present and weathering the storms years after years. An unwavering fluctuat nect mergitur.
Maybe this old lady was the last bastion of stability, and for all the monarchy’s palaces and gold, she was of service to the people, she never stopped, never retired.
I believe this is why people are queuing to pay their respects. Even though they might not be aware of it, they recognise that standing for something bigger than oneself, being of service, and sticking with it until the end of one’s life is something that no longer happens in our dopamine-fueled, instant, fickle, modern world...
Indeed, monarchies might not be relevant anymore, the costumes and ceremonies like vestigial remnants from a distant past, but I’d like to think that this little lady with a colourful hat was still being of service to the people, doing what she could, being an ageing symbol of unity whilst holding up the fort of decency and dignity in a world that badly needs it.
The institution itself is not relevant, what the passing represents is the disappearing art of being of service, a life commitment to something bigger than the individual, something our tribal instinct craves, and is hardly valued in modern society.
The Covid crisis brought attention to nurses being of service and the war is sadly shining a similar light on soldiers. Could the existential angst and search for meaning that so many face, actually be a quest for a way to be of service?
I never really listen to the Queen’s speech, but this Christmas I might miss it.