Something has shifted in how we behave in public, and it is becoming harder to ignore. Enough time has passed since the pandemic for us to recalibrate, to remember how to exist alongside other people without treating every shared space like a personal obstacle course.

What we are dealing with now is ego. A belief that urgency equals importance, that being seen equals significance, that if someone else moves first, boards first, speaks first, then something has been taken from you. It hasn’t. But people behave as if it has.

Take public transport. Doors open and instead of the simple, efficient act of letting people off, bodies surge forward. People press themselves against bus and train doors as if they are trying to force them open, terrified that if they do not get on first they will miss it entirely. The irony is obvious. This behaviour slows everything down. It creates chaos where there should be flow and wastes everyone’s time, including their own.

Then there is the noise. Speakerphone calls blasted into entire carriages. Video calls held inches from faces, phones gripped like blocks of cheese, as if the internal speaker designed to sit against an ear simply does not exist. Conversations about nothing projected to everyone, because silence is apparently unbearable and privacy now optional. Add music playing out loud and the city becomes an unpaid audience.

The people giving you dirty looks are not killjoys. They are unwilling participants.

And then there is obstruction. People stopping dead in doorways, seized by the sudden need to check their phone. Groups spreading across pavements with no intention of moving in. Entire footpaths swallowed by people walking seven abreast, advancing as if the world will part for them. No adjustment. No awareness. No acknowledgement. You either step into the road, stop entirely, or collide.

Theatres and cinemas are not spared. Phones glow mid performance. Feet appear on the backs of seats. Entire meals are consumed as though the point of attending was anything other than watching. Why spend the money to be somewhere if you are determined to behave as though you are at home.

Not all of this is new, and not all of it is intentional. But the cumulative effect is difficult to ignore.

None of this is irrational. Wanting to move through the world without running a gauntlet of entitlement is not unreasonable. Wanting to enjoy something without intrusion is not snobbish. What is unreasonable is the expectation that everyone else should absorb your noise, your urgency, your chaos, simply because you refuse to think beyond yourself.

It points to a culture that has confused freedom with selfishness and confidence with dominance. Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that public life only works if we rein ourselves in.

Right now, that balance feels lost.