People should not look to the Royal Wedding for happiness

Following a celebrity is a tolerable pastime, but building everything around a celebrity’s life is just a waste of your own time.

The recent Royal Wedding in the United Kingdom has had people around the world following the event closely. A recent survey of 2,000 British adults by YouGov revealed that 40 percent of British adults will be celebrating the wedding in one way or another. Though such excitement may be the result of national pride, some people are taking the celebration too far.

On the official website for the Royal Wedding of 2011 (yes, they’ve made a website complete with a Twitter feed and various Youtube videos), people are being asked to share their Royal Wedding experiences on Facebook. Various memorabilia, ranging from cups to placemats, are also on sale for people to remember this particular event. These things, however, don’t last forever. The very slim price of £9.95 can buy a “Royal Wedding” coaster, or perhaps a CD set with William’s and Kate’s faces on them (both of which will last for eternity, or until your three-year old cousin gets his hands on them—whichever comes first).

It’s their wedding day, not yours, for crying out loud.

Naturally, people look up to celebrities and keep up with their happenings. Who wouldn’t want to know what a rich celebrity does on a daily basis when our own lives seem so mundane and repetitive? But this mindset poses some serious problems because instead of thinking about what we can do to make our own lives more interesting, we constantly compare our own lives to those of celebrities who make ridiculously large amounts of money.

Let’s be sensible. True, knowing what happens to celebrities is not an obsession in itself; it is awareness. But looking to celebrities for entertainment and allowing their moments and actions to define our own lives is too much of a dependence on others for joy that we can discover in ourselves.

So please, continue to celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. It truly is a day of rejoice for the world during such difficult times. Just remember not to lose yourself along the way.

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