Life Altering Lessons From a Public Restroom - Part 2

I wanted to follow up with my recent Lesson From a Restroom article and let you all know I have received a lot of interesting comments. What I found to be the most insightful comment was made to my wife by a friend who, just a week after the article was published, observed a very similar scenario to what I had described.

In summary, my wife’s friend was attending an event, and at the venue, there were four doors through which people could enter the facility. Despite that, everyone was standing in a slow-moving line and using only one of the doors.

Today I want to delve just a little deeper into this subject. As I mentioned in my original article, the lesson is not to avoid standing in a line, be it an event, or restroom, as this has a fairly inconsequential impact on your life ( or at least we hope). Rather, the point is, and I can’t stress it enough, and it is why I am following up with my previous article, to avoid being fooled into thinking that everyone knows the answer, whatever your question(s) in your life may be, and thus just becoming a camp follower. Instead the key is to learn how to think independently for yourself and be willing to go against the grain when necessary.

For me, the first exposure to realizing that others didn’t have the answer, was when I was a young man in my early twenties, being nothing more than a simple, not-too-bright farm boy trying to figure out my place in the world, and how to, hopefully, achieve some degree of success.

A friend and I decided we would go rodeo dance featuring a young George Strait. At this time, George had several number-one records and was clearly a star, but not yet the mega-star he would come to be just a few short years later. As my friend and I stood waiting, hundreds if not thousands of people were backed up, waiting to get in. I clearly remember standing there and looking to my side and realizing we could just walk around the side of the building. After getting nowhere standing in line, I told my friend to follow me. As we walked around the side of the building and towards the back, we could see George’s bus, where approximately 10-20 people stood. As we joined the small group and chatted, George soon came out, walked within 10 feet of us, and made his way to the bandstand. We sat there, basically backstage, watching George perform.

It was strange at the time because I knew immediately that I had witnessed something very, very powerful (and no it wasn’t how to get backstage at a concert). I didn’t know exactly what it was or how to describe it, but I immediately knew I had experienced a sociological event that could change my life.

For some time, the only thing I knew was that thousands of people were waiting patiently, and some impatiently, at the front door of the arena and outside, just hoping to get a mere glimpse of George, while my friend and I had merely walked around the side of the building and secured a vantage point that most people would have died for.

Over time as I mulled over the situation to identify the ultimate lesson, I realized the true life lesson is that we so often incorrectly believe there is one way to do things, and that the proverbial person in front of us, or to our side, our friends, or even our parents must know the correct answer… when in fact they don’t.

Think about however, if we assume the person in front of us has the answer, and that person assumes the person in front of them has the answer, and this is repeated until we reach the person at the end of the line, then, if one of those people is wrong, everyone standing in the line is wrong!

There is also a secondary lesson I learned and want to stress, and that is that once we become aware of the fact others around you don’t have all the answers, if you keep an open mind and an open eye, the more you will see opportunities others don’t see, that have the power to change your life.