Sometimes you'll afce people in traffic, on the sidewalk, on a train who you'd rather not deal with. Crazy people, cranky folks, drunk scoundrels, you name it and you'll see it. However, you can either pick a fight, stew in anger, or rise above the mess and move on with your day.
Any member of my family will tell you, I can get pretty grumpy at times, and it's easy for me to get frustrated with a bad driver, crying baby, loud passenger, or slow walker. My method of coping with troubles usually used to involve me grimacing and whining to those around me. However, after dealing with lots of crowds, delays, and cities with varying methods of transport, I'm beginning to turn over a new leaf.
Nowadays, when faced with troublesome travel, I grin, giggle, move along, look for a distraction, and try to take it like a champ. I first started shifting my perspective through my experience on the metro in Copenhagen. Here the metro, even if fully packed, was filled with cordial, quiet passengers who wouldn't unnecessarily engage and kept to themselves. I actually found the loudest passengers to be my peers, the Americans. We had very little courtesy for lines, personal space, or silence, which often earned us stares followed by a shrug and an eye roll.
I started to notice what a problem we were causing but appreciated that, rather than confront us and insult our foreign tendencies, the Danes moved on with their day. They simply had a maturity and patience that many in our own community lack. I tried to take this trait back to me with America. When I find myself in a crowd or a closed space with less than ideal company, I don't moan to my traveling partners, but rather try to see some of myself or at least understand why this is happening. I don't glare or sign as I would have in the past, I carry on and focus on my own concerns.
Beyond traveling companions, other tests of patience often emerge to make getting where you're going an trial filled journey. For several of the flights I've taken in the past months, problems have arisen, whether related to technical difficulties in trains or planes, roads closed and diverted, or planes delayed due to weather issues.
My first confrontation with this occurred going from Prague to Copenhagen. I had to catch a flight to get to class that afternoon, and when I heard there were technical difficulties, I lost my cool and asked flight attendants questions they couldn't possibly know the answer to. We only had a slight delay but it got my blood boiling.
My next two experiences with delays were much bigger. 4 and 6 hour delays from various airports to my home airport were seemingly arranged to test me. This time, remembering how foolish I'd felt before, I chose to approach the situation differently. I grabbed a snack, situated myself comfortably, and busied myself with books, articles, anything I could find.
While the hours ticked by and I missed my family, I knew I would make it back eventually and knew getting frustrated with airport officials doing their best wouldn't earn me any favors. I laughed as people yelled, red in the face, because I knew it would be all right. And it truly was all right in the end, I landed safely at home without suffering through technical terrors or turbulence.
If what they say is true, that growing older makes you wiser, then I've wizened up in one aspect so far. Enjoy the journey, laugh it off and be patient. You will get there.
//If nothing else, patience is waiting for your nail polish to dry.
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