Richard is the character with the biggest transformation in the film. He goes from being so certain that you can create your own destiny and choose happiness, to understanding how important it is to be yourself and take life as it comes – there are things that are out of our control. No matter what we plan in life there will always be things that we have to deal with outside of those plans, and the better we are at dealing with them, the happier we will be. This scene serves as one step of Richard's gathering of experiences that will ultimately make him come to that realization. Also, Richard tries to reason with Olive as if she was an adult. That only seems to confuse her. Grandpa instead leads by example and that works much better.