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| PHOTO: PRESS ASSOCIATION / Danny Lawson. |
When a loved-one passes, everything changes, yet life carries on as if nothing has changed. The sun rises, the birds chatter, the rain falls. We eat and drink and love and work; the sun sets, we sleep and wake, and life carries on.
The death of the Queen, after 70 years on the throne, is unprecedented. Most of us have not known a world without "the Queen." She had already reigned for five years when I was born. We do not know as yet whether the collective grief and sense of loss will be a ripple, a swell or a tsunami. Twenty-five years ago the death of Princess Diana approached near national hysteria. So far, it seems that, with the death of the Queen, people's feelings are touched at a deep level, but without the same fervor or intensity. I sense sadness, uncertainty, fearfulness. I'm listening for hopefulness but have not heard much. King Charles is a known/unknown quantity, inflation rages, politicians squabble, the war in Ukraine continues, floods and wildfires persist. And life carries on.
I teach social and political philosophy, largely in the American context, but the United Kingdom is always a backdrop. The British monarchy has survived revolutions, world wars, and was almost brought down by the untimely death of a princess. Yet, still it remains. For how long who knows. The monarchy and its sometimes uneasy relationship to people and parliament has always been subject to what historian Christopher Hill called "the stop in the mind." Why a republic was not established in the seventeenth century when the monarchy was both corrupt and weak, remains forever a mystery. That "stop in the mind" produced the tangled web that is the British constitutional monarchy; a far more complex and intractable set of conflicting claims than in the United States where "we the people" carries a pragmatic simplicity. Hereditary sovereignty, rule by a single family for no good reasons others than "divine right" or "this is the way its has always been" seems anachronistic in the twenty-first century. Even so, life carries on.
I have heard much talk of the stability that the Queen brought to the world. Fifteen British prime ministers; one queen. Fourteen presidents of the United States; one queen. The second world war, the Suez crisis, the dissolution of Empire, the Northern Ireland Troubles, the Falklands War, the first gulf war, the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the Ukraine war; one queen. Through it all the collective narrative has been that whatever else happens we can rely on the Queen. She is always there. Dutiful, stoic, benevolent, godlike—something solid to fall back on. But not now. And still life carries on.
Evidence suggests that people long for certainty. People believe any manner of improbable things, just so long as that improbability suggests certainty. Religious fundamentalism promises the certain truth. Political programs present the certain solution. Nationalism offers the certainty of the best nation. The certainty of science is a chimera. All such certainties fail. To place faith in them brings disappointments. Attachment to such certainties brings suffering. Better to make peace with uncertainty and ambiguity. Life carries on.
Having said all that, I mourn the loss of the Queen. l will try to learn from her stoic sense of duty and from her stability in ever-changing times. The Queen was a person of faith. I take "faith" to mean "trust in" rather than "belief about." After all, one can "believe" aliens visit from outer space, but who trusts in that? The Queen was the most private of public persons. We can only guess in what she trusted, save to say that her faith was Christian. Yet, it's clear that her faith gave her life a bedrock to face enormous changes with courage and grace. I hope my faith is as strong.
Be kind today as life carries on,
+Ab. Andy