Guidelines For Navigating Crowded Spaces

Here’s some guidelines meant to help people on how to navigate in crowded spaces.

These “Guidelines” is meant for anyone who has to navigate around crowded spaces. It is meant to provide a framework for anyone who has been clueless about how to respond to situations of crowdedness whenever and wherever they are encountered. The Guidelines comprise of the following statements:

  1. Everyone is struggling to get to where they want to go, including other people. You are not the only person with somewhere to go. There are other people too!
  2. You have 2 eyes and 2 ears. You can choose to be aware about what’s around you. You can still choose to be immersed in Candy Crush or IMing, provided that they do not hinder your awareness of the immediate surroundings. This principle is absolute crucial for the next principle, which is…
  3. You have 2 legs and 2 hands. You can choose to move (with 2 feet) and you can choose to signal your intentions to move (with 2 hands). You can point to where you are heading; you move to space from a crowded area. Which leads me to the next principle, which is…
  4. You need not be where you are! This is absolutely crucial. You can choose where you want to be, instead of being ‘stuck’ where you are. Even if you feel you are stuck, you can always use the next principle, which is…
  5. You have a mouth. You can use your mouth to say “excuse me”, or “sorry” to indicate that you desire some space to move into.

There is one rule that is the foundation of the other rules. And it is thus:

That, “I shall not be a bad person” on public transport.

Without this rule, all other rules fall apart. This rule means that you do not hinder the spaces of others, especially the elderly, the pregnant, those with special mobilities (wheelchairs, crutches, and so on). The rules do not restrict when one should have to give space; even if you are sitting on a non-reserved seat, one can still give space to the above categories of people.

We might not know the suffering others are going through, and we can always lessen the pain a little by giving up the space that we have to others.

 

I invite people to illustrate, make jokes, adapt it and have fun with this. I believe that we can learn to negotiate space, both literal ones and metaphorical spaces. Maybe when we learn how to share literal spaces better, we will learn how to share other spaces with others – metaphorical, emotional, and social spaces, among others.

Leave a comment