Looking Outward To Find Our Identity

One has to feel a certain empathy for Meghan Markel – the newest royal through her marriage with Prince Harry. Enduring scrutiny in a fishbowl unlike any other, Markel has to fight for her own identity and image in an institution bathed in historical structure, rigid adherence to form, fighting for air amongst a host of other royal family personages who have the advantage of learning the protocols from the youngest age.  In such a setting, images of Diana come to mind.It’s all about identity and Meghan Markel is up against the best of them.  And yet there is something benignly noble about her fighting for her own space.  Sure, she receives endless criticism as a person of privilege in a privileged world, but that is beside the point here.  Markle wants people to know that she holds to her own convictions and that she’s prepared to fight for them.As a royal, Markel is expected to pick up a cause and run with it because, well, that’s what royals do – and the list is extensive.  She has chosen to emphasize the importance and vitality of food as her favourite cause and this week she gave definition to that effort by announcing her new cookbook as her first charitable endeavour.  And the newly installed Duchess of Sussex has chosen as the recipients of the sales 50 of the women who lost loved ones and their homes in the Grenfell tragedy and who have subsequently gathered in the Hub Community Kitchen in London to share their grief, experiences and hopes for a better tomorrow.To her credit, Markel has already shown this propensity to help others with food long before she took up residence in the royal quarters.  While living in Toronto she volunteered regularly at the local soup kitchen, developing and nurturing a deeper empathy for the circumstances of those she was endeavouring to assist.We hear a lot about identity these days; it’s everywhere.  Identity politics.  National identity.  Cultural identity.  Gender identity.  Social identity.  Racial identity.  They are all present in our modern world and they are all pressing for attention to their circumstances.  That’s in part because identity lies at the heart of human experience, assisting us with self-definition, self-understanding and self-discovery. Through it we learn who we are, why we exist and how we should live our lives.There are those among us, however, who feel that they can’t find that identity without including others.  They seek to serve, to lift up, to empathize with, to share, and in so doing remind us of Mahatma Gandhi’s insight:  “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  Great leaders like Mother Theresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Michelle Obama stated their own versions of this reality.Through all indications, Meghan Markle is attempting to live a life of independence, dependence and interdependence all at the same time.  Since how we connect with others determines our ability to transcend traditional bounds of culture and insular identity, Markle is attempting to carve out a humanitarian space for herself that moves past the traditional role of the royals and, as such, should be commended.Perhaps she understands better than many that our constant pressing need to see identity as primarily a position of being different from others will in the end prove untenable.  There is compelling evidence that our common identity might well prove a healing element to the nations and cultures.  To separate ourselves from others in order to stress our uniqueness is understandably appropriate but can’t prove redemptive until it stands side by side with the need for all humans to have a spirit of understanding, solidarity and mutual respect.  If our perspective of human beings continues on its present path of one-dimensional fragmentation, then we, like Humpty Dumpty, might find that there are too many pieces to put ourselves back together again.For every claim like Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre that, “I am not an angel and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself,” must be matched by Suzy Kassem’s observation: “To become a true global citizen, one must abandon all notions of otherness and embrace togetherness.”It is no accident that the title of Meghan Markle’s book is,Together: Our Community Cookbook.  You can watch the video of just how she’s managing it below.  It’s actually pretty remarkable.  https://youtu.be/2gXwBYs2Ulw