A Lesson in Patience: Disney trip Part 1
Updated: May 31, 2019
If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a frequent flyer at Disneyland. The other day, I was in line for the Indiana Jones ride—a favourite of mine since I started going to Disneyland almost 20 years ago. In my opinion, this ride has really withstood the test of time.
After waiting in line for about fifteen minutes, my wife and I made it to the front of the line only to have the ride stop suddenly. We hear a Disneyland employee come over the loudspeaker: “Please bear with us folks, the ride will be back on shortly, but for now, it’s out of order.” He told us we could either stay in line, or head to another attraction.
Not missing an opportunity to enjoy a fantastic ride, we decided to wait it out.
After about five minutes, we overheard a little kid behind us start to complain.
“I want to leave! Get me out of here! Let’s go somewhere else. Grandpa why are we here if the ride doesn’t work?! Come on let’s gooooooo!”
The Grandpa, calmly addressed the boy.
“Really? You want to go? I’ve got my keys in my pocket. We can go home right now if that’s what you want.”
Before the kid had the chance to respond, his grandpa continued with some tough love.
“You know what your problem is? You’re spoiled. Maybe next time we come to Disneyland we don’t even buy Fast-Passes and we wait hours upon hours to get on rides. An hour for Cars? Sure. Two hours for Space Mountain? You got it.”
The Grandfather paused for a second and then offered his final, and most valuable, piece of advice.
“You need to learn to be patient. Sometimes in life, we don’t get everything we want right away. And sometimes, we don’t get what we want at all. That's life.”
“So…” he asked the boy, “would you still like to go home?”
The kid sat silently in shock and disbelief, waiting. Sure enough, after ten minutes, the ride was back up and running. We all got on the ride and we all had a great time.
This Grandpa’s speech got me thinking…
Just because we want something right away, doesn’t always mean we’re going to get it. Sometimes, we just need to be patient and wait. And sometimes, things are just out of our hands. When adversity hits, we need to learn to have composure.
This lack of composure is something we see all too often in our day-to-day lives. We see something, and we want it—NOW. And when we don't get it, we lose our minds.
In fact, this need for instant-gratification recently caused Amazon to reduce Prime shipping from two days to one, costing them approximately 800 million dollars. All because their customers want things NOW. Suddenly, two days to ship something across the country isn’t fast enough.
After thinking about it and talking it over with my wife, we thought the whole Indiana Jones debacle was an excellent lesson in patience, and that everyone could benefit from adopting a mindset like this Grandpa's. “Be grateful, be patient, and enjoy the results.”
As Master Splinter tells us in Ninja Turtles: “Patience is a virtue my son.”