Everyone at the airport thinks their trip is the important one. That’s what being a person feels like.

Each person moves through a crowd at the centre of their own urgent business. Yours feels like the one that matters because you are the only one you can feel from inside, and the same is true for everybody around you. Nobody is being self-absorbed on purpose. It is just how being one person works.

In the next crowd that irritates you, pick three strangers and guess where they are going and who they are meeting. It takes a minute and the irritation drops noticeably. The traffic in front of you is other people’s important days.