I promised you a post about Queen Elizabeth II and seniors in the workplace, and I always try to keep my promises. So here it is and a much needed change of pace from the world’s ills it offers — but only to a certain extent.
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee takes place June 2 through 5, celebrating her 70 years on the British throne. When she turned 21 in 1947, then Princess Elizabeth pledged her life. “whether it be long or short,” to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Five years later, her beloved father, George VI, would be dead and she would be queen.
In succeeding him, she’s made good on her pledge of service — which is not to say she hasn’t had her ups and downs. The Diana years were not her best as she came across as cold and unfeeling in contrast to the empathetic Princess of Wales, and many have questioned her fondness for some of the royal family’s more troubled members — grandson Prince Harry, who with wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, could’ve done so much for the Commonwealth in particular but who chose to leave; and son Prince Andrew, who paid Virginia Giuffre $16 million to settle a lawsuit in which she claimed he sexually abused her when she was a teenager.
Other critics, like Canada’s J.J. McCullough, have stated that if the queen can’t do her job — sending heir Prince Charles to open Parliament while she attended horse and flower shows — she should quit.
But why? It’s not that at 96 she isn’t doing her job, but rather that her job now is to ease other people — specifically Prince Charles and wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall — into it. Yes, of course, she’s less mobile and needs other royals to be boots on the ground. But she also knows she has to make her subjects — few of whom have known any monarch but her — comfortable with her eventual passing. It’s important to see the Prince of Wales opening Parliament. But why should she give up perks like the Chelsea Flower Show? After a lifetime of service, hasn’t she earned them?
This is, after all, what a good CEO does — ensures the survival of the brand and of his/her own legacy with a smooth transition. Yet some CEOs, like their employees, are forced out before their time. The idea that we all have a certain shelf life in the workplace is maddening. The thinking goes, the queen should retire and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg should’ve retired so President Barack Obama could’ve nominated a liberal justice to the Supreme Court. I guess these critics like Pope Benedict XVI, who did retire.
There’s a grace in knowing when to bow out. But there’s a grace, too, in playing the long game, particularly when so many young people in the workplace — the so-called “it’s not working for me; I can’t do this” generation — seem incapable of it.
There was a long stretch — in the late 1960s and ’70s, leading up to the Princess Diana years of the 1980s and ’90s — when the queen seemed out of step with the times, as symbolized by her matchy-matchy outfits and tight flip hairdo, which branded her as dowdy. But the great thing about being old when you’re young — she was only 25 when she came to the throne — and living to a ripe old age is that eventually the times and your looks align. Watching the queen now is like enjoying a sherbet sunset. She has come full circle, exhibiting a girlish delight, her bright, monolithic ensembles appearing iconic, her personality more playful, reassuring and, here’s something we all need, comforting. Credit for some of this must go to adviser Angela Kelly, who stands in relationship to the queen as Elizabeth Keckly did to Mary Todd Lincoln — dressmaker turned confidante.
But much of this is just the queen herself, and time. As she’s grown old, we’ve grown up. We’re able to see the virtue in duty, dignity, discipline — her virtues.
Give up the throne? Rather, Your Majesty, play the hand you’ve been dealt to its glorious end.