Ever wonder when the world changed and you became stuck in your ways? And when was the first time you uttered the dreadful words: “It has always been done this way.”

Just a while ago, I read a short article about the Royal Family of Norway and how difficult it has been for the fiancé of princess Märtha Louise, Mr. Durek Verrett to be accepted in society.

He is an American and a shaman. This was a lot for the Norwegian public to take in, as he is not exactly the most traditional choice for a princess to marry. I hate to have to admit, but that was also my reaction when I first heard of this back in 2019. Maybe it was because we have been taught that shamanism and all the other new age movements are man-made and fake, or maybe it was because the media makes it look like that.

What surprises me is that four years down the line, the newspapers are still writing biased stories about this. Reading the article just now, in 2023, made me think about how we can use the words to enforce the old, traditional ways to the public without even realising it. If the news articles use such phrases like “he titles himself as a shaman”, “he claims to have some healing skills” and “he has this necklace that apparently is a talisman from his mother” that already gives the impression that the writer wants us all to belive that the guy is a charlatan.

But when two people are happy together, shouldn’t that be enough for the rest of us? If a princess wants to marry her soulmate from the US, what is it for us? In a world filled with over 7 billion people, we should cherish them for having found love.

Of course, like all stories, this has two sides to it. Mr. Verrett has admitted that he didn’t know about all the etiquette and rules that came with the life at the court. And he has been open and calm about it – unlike another American who got married to a Royal House and wants to point the blame to the institution about everything.

But, what really surprises me is the way that I and possibly others view anything new and foreign. Are we really so stuck with the idea of things having been done this way?

For us to progress and evolve, we need to stop looking to the past to find glory, but instead, we need to face the future and imagine all the possibilities to reality – the brighter and the darker ones.

Turning our train of thought away from the past glories is not an easy task – if it was, we wouldn’t have the things have always been done this way way of thinking. And by realising that we need to change this, maybe we can.

If we didn’t change, we still wouldn’t be talking more openly about mental health, for instance.