Controlling the Crowd…That’s Controlling Us. Peace…When We Get Out-Paced.
This crowd?
A Tokyo train station. Followed by a subway ride…
In rush hour.
The busiest train station in the world. Twice as many riders go through it as live in my city—the seventh largest in the US.
Every day.
That’s a crowd.
My wife and I’ve navigated it…and gotten lost…multiple times.
The irony? Even though the station was packed shoulder to shoulder…
Hot.
Cramped.
Anxiety-inducing even before we got on the subway—where it was even tighter.
Both were quiet.
Orderly.
Polite.
Safe.
People weren’t the problem.
We were.
__________________
After our first trip to Tokyo, before we were even wheels up from Haneda, we knew we were going back. Before landing in Hawaii, we knew when and where we would go.
As we spent months preparing, we watched and re-watched walking tours of Tokyo.
The problem hit us.
Our goal had been to see as much as we could in the week we had. As often as we shouted, “Been there!”
We said…
“How did we miss that?”
Our stomachs sank as we thought of the investment in our trip.
Time.
Energy.
Money.
Yet every day we were within a block or two of things we wanted to do. Literally within sight of places we wanted to go.
And missed them.
It wasn’t as though the trip was a “failure.”
It wasn’t.
Neither were we.
We realized the itinerary wasn’t the problem.
Pressure was.
“We have to get over there.”
“We can’t get in the way.”
“What if we miss out?”
We were so focused on keeping up with the crowd and our schedule that it cost us more time.
More energy.
More money.
We were using the wrong cues.
And missed the signs.
The ones easy to spot.
With arrows.
And in English.
____________________
My wife and I went out to dinner to talk about our next trip.
“We need to figure out how to stop.”
Because she is the brains of the operation, I stopped eating.
And started to worry.
She had her look.
I asked very gently, “What do you mean?”
Thankfully she didn’t say our trip
Or dinner.
Or our marriage.
“When we were in Japan, we worried too much about how long we were in a place and how to get there…”
“What if we didn’t?”
Admittedly, she caught me off guard.
“So… stop worrying or stop using a map in the world’s largest city?”
After she silently questioned her life decision to marry me, she went on.
“No. We figure out how to stop. To pause before we do anything else.”
I laughed.
“You realize I write and speak about pausing. And we’re literally trying to figure out how to pause.”
“Maybe that’s the problem…” my wife said.
“We didn’t and look at what we missed.”
I stopped laughing.
We had created a pressure to see “everything.” Relied on GPS, which didn’t care what we saw only how fast we got there. The crowd didn’t care where we were going, just where they were heading.
My wife was right and I was wrong.
A pause could get us run over in rush hour.
A pause with purpose would make a good trip great.
We had to learn how to stop.
No matter what the watch, the map, and the crowd wanted.
We had accomplished the trip.
Without experiencing the accomplishment.
__________________________
Three minutes…
A walk that took us thirty-five on our first trip.
Down to three minutes on our second.
“Well, that’s because you knew where you were going this time!”
“No…”
“Because we paused.”
Same train.
Same train station.
Different strategy.
A pause…
Unwinding mistakes.
Finding direction.
Stepping outside the crowd.
Less time and energy.
Biggest city in the world.
Busiest train station in the world.
Most peaceful place in the world.
See how crowd noise benched the very best.
My name is G. Scott, and I write about the power…and burden of the words shaping people, organizations, and outcomes. I’ve served over thirty years in the corporate environment scaling operations and sales initiatives and teams regionally and nationally.
I have been blessed with my wonderful wife Alyson, three great kids and my first granddaughter.
The most important part of my work? You. I hope you share your story!
If this has been tough, please reach out to a trusted friend, pastor, or counselor.
