Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, were chosen to grace the cover of the 2021 edition of the Time 100: The Most Influential People of 2021. After publicly cutting ties with the British royal family several months ago and moving to America, the couple described the whole ordeal in a televised interview and, as a result, made this year’s list.
Many people have strong opinions about Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave Buckingham Palace; I don’t. My knowledge of British royalty is limited to the few seasons of “The Crown” I watched with my wife before we canceled our Netflix subscription. What does interest me, however, is how their decision, which has been widely hailed as “brave” and “authentic,” mirrors something increasingly popular among modern young adults: cutting so-called “toxic people” out of their lives.
It’s also notable how quickly friends, relatives and neighbors can be labeled “toxic” simply by holding different political, moral or religious beliefs. Recently, a psychologist specializing in family therapy told The Atlantic that his practice is flooded with older parents mourning estrangement from their grown children and with grown children angry and hurt by conflicts with their parents. Apparently, when it comes to family fractures, the royal family is far from exceptional.
In fact, according to a recent piece by Sarah Logan in The Guardian, you don’t even have to be “toxic” to find yourself cut out of a loved one’s life. It’s enough that you don’t “spark joy.”
In the article, Logan documents a growing group of young people practicing “relationship minimalism.” Inspired by home-organizing coaches like Marie Kondo, these mostly urban, single adults are not only clearing their lives of excess stuff; they’re tossing out excess people. For example, 20-something YouTube star Ronald Banks says that living a minimalist lifestyle with only a few sets of clothes, simple furniture and bare-minimum electronics prompted him to go the next step and ditch meaningless relationships, too. Or, as he called them, “emotional clutter.”