There is No Express Train to Success

Sitting down to a nine-hour layover in Denver (which shall be followed up by a twelve-hour layover in Chicago) I'm reminded of a certain experience in Japan this last spring...an experience in patience.

If you've never seen a Studio Ghibli film—first of all, watch one. Google it. Second of all, you might not be able to fully understand the momentous occasion of visiting the Ghibli Museum. If that's the case, think of it this way. For a fan, visiting Japan without seeing the Ghibli Museum would be like getting cake and ice cream on your birthday but no presents.

Now that we've got that straight, imagine: an excited Ghibli fan, eager to unwrap the experience of the Museo d'arte Ghibli, waking up before sunrise to head out on the (GPS) estimated two-hour journey to Mitaka, leaving an additional hour and a half early. Just in case.

Because purchasing a ticket to the Ghibli Museum means selecting a certain time of entry and, as warned in all of the online information resources, if one is late one cannot go in.

As I waited on the platform of the first train station, face buried in the directions on my phone, the sound of a train arriving on the other side of the track caused me to look up. Its signs indicated the same line as the train I stood waiting for, as well as the same destination of Shibuya. I'd have to book it back down the escalator and around to the other side of the platform to get on it in time. I considered this. The digital kanji on its signs were red in color. It was an express train, destined to arrive much faster at Shibuya, flying swiftly without stopping at the smallest of the stations along the way. But the local train coming to my side of the platform would arrive at the same destination. I decided not to dash all the way over just for the chance to catch a different train.

That split-second decision proved to be the difference of two and a half hours.

Well, to say the one decision cost me two and a half hours is an exaggeration for an effect. But it snowballed into a lot of bumbling about, being lost. For awhile I rode in the placid quiet of a solo traveler on a nearly empty car of public transport. But after some time, upon checking my progress on my map application, it seemed that this train would either arrive too late at Shibuya or never arrive there at all. Whether this came about by pilot error or technological failure, I've still no idea. Suffice to say that, in panic, I ended up resetting my GPS directions at two different stops and changing lines. But even the train I ended up taking placed me on a route that my maps application estimated would take another two hours...when I only had an hour and a half to spare.

At this rate, I'd be at least thirty minutes late. I would miss my time slot.

During just about the length of time it would take to watch one of the Studio Ghibli movies, I tried to calm myself. Surely they would be kind enough to forgive my tardiness when they heard my story. Surely they would still let me in. The ball of nerves inside me eventually subsided into a peace towards whatever was to come. I decided to be confident in the kindness and welcome that I'd received in Japan so far. After all, only the night before a gentleman offered to let me charge my dying phone with his own charger when my clumsy charging contraption was too large for the outlet under the lip of the table at Starbucks.

I did, however, manage to wonder, in a bit of an existential mood, if my mistake of not taking the express train that morning could be taken as a metaphor for not taking the express train in life. With very anti-Frost spirit, I questioned my tendency to take the road less traveled by. Did it, in the long run, sidetrack me from my destination?

Worn down by anxious waiting over a journey of four plus hours, I finally made it to the Ghibli Museum. With a stinging sensation behind my eyes, I tried not to be teary as I showed an employee my ticket with its hour earlier time slot. In an apologetic tone I said, in English, that I'd gotten lost. With a nod and a smile, he stamped my ticket for entry without any fuss. I'm pretty positive, based on how quickly he did so, that it didn't matter what I said. Perhaps it helped that I was just one ticket-holder. Perhaps it helped that the next time slot wasn't full. Or perhaps it was just kindness. Whatever the reason, I was welcome.

One of the many wonders in the Ghibli Museum is a fanciful replica of the home and workplaces of the great director and imaginative storyteller Hayao Miyazaki. Rooms piled high with books, including such gems as photobooks of English gardens and the Notebooks of Alfred Hitchcock, showcase a curiosity and hunger for story and the building up of worlds. Boxes upon boxes filled with pencils meticilously used up to the same shortness of length, contraptions projecting film frame-by-frame, and other endless displays of obsessiveness, show a man pouring out hours, days, years of passionate work into his vision.

In awe, I looked over the many local stops along the line of Hayao Miyazaki's storytelling journey. A new metaphor surfaced from that morning, one of the giggles of teenagers on the way to school and slow-moving views of Tokyo neighborhoods; one of learning the peace of patience when all one can do is wait; one of allowing oneself to expect kindness, and being shown that kindness.

In all of these musings, a thought occurred.

There is no express train to success.

Perhaps, alternatively, it could be said that there's no direct flight to succcess, either.