This one is pretty special. My son is showing a girl around the Magic Kingdom.
Time moves forward. Occasionally I’ve seen my Disney interest, and even interest in things like racing and video games, as a pointless attempt to hold on to the past.
After all, I just rode pirates for the billionth time. I still spent most of the ride (and most of the queue for that matter) smiling with silly child wonderment. It’s extra silly because it’s not like I don’t know tons about this ride already. I know what comes next. I know how it all works. I know what elements have been changed throughout the years.
Bring back the wench auction.
But I digress.
Perhaps it is all just nostalgia. Going to the Rolex every year is done out of fun but also out of tradition. Maybe it’s just the memories pushing us forward. Maybe it’s just the comfort of the past that makes me want to take back thursday tbt .
But people miss out on the other side of tradition - how tradition informs us going forward. Justin uses the trip to the Rolex every year to measure the passage of time, it’s something we’ve done before and will do again, so it’s something to think about, talk about, and prepare for. Maybe, at the end of the day, that’s all Disney is.
But I still digress. The point here is I’m here today not so much for myself (though I am having a great time and will continue to). I’m here because my son wanted to bring a girl here.
It’s weird when traditions jump beyond yourself to someone else. I suppose that’s exactly how it works, though. I guess that’s when it skips from being a habit to a tradition.
Who knows what the future will bring. But in the past, one of the things Amy and I went and did early on was a trip to Universal Studios together. The situations around that trip were not the best, but the time together in the park was great. After the sun went down we were scrambling place to place, ride to ride, doing all the things before closing time. It was cool. It was fun. It was one of the many times I realized she was good for me.
Maybe I’m observing something similar today. Time will tell. But I can say this: I’m going to stop seeing the things I’ve done a million times as me desperately trying to hold onto an already disappeared past. Maybe those things are there to help guide my future.
Bonus: Xander a few years apart at Epcot
