What Kingdom Hearts Fans Can Teach You About Patience
Yes, I see you too, Half Life fans. You can teach us the same lesson.
When Kingdom Hearts first came out, I’d just finished my first year in elementary school.
I was a kid who found herself immersed in Disney and Pokémon as most did at that age (shout out to Pokémon Red for beginning my interest in that). I dabbled in Final Fantasy, in Barbie games (Pet Rescue was baller), and even The Powerpuff Girls Game Boy games caught my eye.
But I found myself returning back to Pokémon and Kingdom Hearts, waiting patiently for a new game to release. It was so fun, being able to explore the world those two series had created. Of course, with Pokémon, that was easy: a new game practically came out every year — two, if I was really lucky — giving me something new to explore or try.
With the Kingdom Hearts series, games weren’t as…er…straightforward as they were in Pokémon. After the first Kingdom Hearts game came out, then came Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, which I loved playing on my Game Boy SP. Then came Kingdom Hearts II in 2005, which I thought was another fantastic game.
This, dear readers who may have never played Kingdom Hearts, is where things go AWOL.
You may think the next game after would have been Kingdom Hearts III, right?
No. No, that’s not what happens, dear reader. As you can see on your left, after Kingdom Hearts II, there are nine games and a movie — fourteen years of work — between Kingdom Hearts II and III, and each game has a bit of story to it that adds up.
To make things a little more difficult, most of the games are on handheld consoles while some of the others are on Playstation. (I didn’t have a Nintendo 3DS until recently, so I’ve fallen behind, too.) The games, also, aren’t in order in the slightest, as you can see from the story timeline below:
As you can see, many of the recent games are interwoven in the storyline of the first and “second” game — and some of the games even happen before the first game.
You may be thinking now, dear reader, where this article is going. Why video games? Why all this talk of time? I’ll tell you what I’ve learned recently, as I’ve waited for Kingdom Hearts III to finally come out:
Things may not happen immediately, and there may be things that happen that feel out of place. But if you slow down and have some faith in the process, things will turn out just fine, and, maybe, those things will turn out even better than expected.
There is no reason to rush. There is no real reason to hurry your plan. The only thing limiting you is the idea that you must get something done immediately. Where did this idea come from, anyway? It isn’t healthy behavior to rush and hurry.
It’s truly amazing what you can achieve when you’re not hard on yourself about getting it done.
Rushing is just going to cause you to stress, and if you’re like me, your brain will just shut down. If you pace yourself and give yourself time to breathe, you should be able to get everything done the way you want it to be done.
If you rush something, it may end up getting spoiled or ruining it in the end. So why not just take it slow? Please don’t apologize for your hard work taking more time than you thought, because in the end, after you take it one step at a time, the end result might be even more beautiful than when you began. It’s truly amazing what you can achieve when you’re not hard on yourself about getting it done.
Kingdom Hearts III is out today. If you’d like to play through it and fall in love, I’d recommend playing The Story So Far, as it has all the games and the movie on it, or you can enjoy this video series Square Enix made for the occasion. I’m holding it in my hands now, and hey, no, I’m not crying, shut up.
So please: have a good day, and take your time with it, too. Take a deep breath, and try to enjoy every second.
Cheyenne Ciré is a big nerd who works to help others in a happy consulting band of nerds like herself. She writes, edits, and does a lot of dreaming. If you’d like to work with her, you can send a message here, or if you’d like to work with the band, please send your message here.
