One morning recently, I was travelling by car and was supposed to be dropped off at Sonargaon. The usual route from Hatirjheel towards Kawran Bazar, however, was closed. The driver had to take an alternative route before reaching Sonargaon.
The journey became much longer than expected. Nearly an hour was lost.
As I watched the traffic crawl along an unfamiliar route, I realized that the road closure and resulting congestion were certainly real problems. But so was our tendency to react to such disruptions with disproportionate frustration and anger. The inconvenience is real; our response can sometimes make it worse.
A driver becomes angry because another car has stopped for a few seconds. A motorcyclist shouts at a pedestrian. A pedestrian responds angrily to a driver. Someone honks repeatedly because traffic is not moving, as if the sound of the horn could somehow make the road wider. At a shop, government office, hospital, queue or on public transport, people often seem to be operating with very little patience.
Sometimes, even a small disruption is enough to push us over the edge. Why?
Perhaps because we have become accustomed to living with uncertainty and inconvenience. Traffic congestion, road construction, power interruptions, bureaucratic delays, crowded public spaces, and unreliable services are part of everyday life. We plan our day knowing that something may go wrong. Yet instead of becoming more tolerant of disruptions, we often seem to have developed shorter tempers.
The irony is that we already know things frequently do not go according to plan. Yet when something actually goes wrong, we react as though it should never have happened.
The closed road that morning was beyond my control. I could not reopen the crossing, remove the traffic, or recover the lost hour. I could either spend the journey becoming increasingly frustrated or accept the situation and ask a more useful question: What can I do now?
That distinction matters.
When something goes wrong, our first instinct is often to look for someone to blame. But blame does not necessarily solve the immediate problem. Nor does anger.
There is an important difference between reacting to a problem and responding to it.
Reaction is immediate. Response requires a pause.
Reaction asks, “Why is this happening?” Response asks, “What can I do now?”
This does not mean that we should accept poor services, bad planning, or inefficient systems without question. We should demand better roads, better traffic management, better public services, and greater accountability. But there is a difference between addressing a systemic problem and dealing with an immediate inconvenience.
A person stuck in traffic cannot solve Dhaka's transportation crisis from behind the steering wheel. A passenger who is already late cannot recover the lost hour by becoming angry. And aggressive driving will not make a closed road reopen.
Yet our streets are full of precisely this kind of frustration.
More worrying is how quickly irritation spreads. One person's impatience can become another person's aggression. A honk becomes an insult; an insult becomes an argument; an argument can become a confrontation. A minor inconvenience that could have ended in seconds can turn into a much bigger conflict.
Perhaps we need to pay greater attention to something very ordinary: Civility.
Small courtesies do not solve structural problems, but they make everyday life more manageable. A simple “thank you” or an apology, allowing someone to pass or responding calmly when someone makes a mistake, can prevent unnecessary conflict.
Yet these basic gestures increasingly seem to be disappearing from public life.
An apology can be seen as weakness. Allowing someone to go ahead can feel like losing. Even acknowledging the service of a driver, security guard, shopkeeper, or other worker can sometimes seem unnecessary.
But societies are not held together only by laws and institutions. They are also shaped by thousands of everyday interactions between strangers.
The way we speak to one another matters. So does the way we behave when we are inconvenienced.
That last point may be particularly important. It is easy to be polite when everything is going according to plan. The real test comes when we are late, stuck, tired, frustrated, or inconvenienced.
We cannot control every road closure or traffic jam. We cannot control every mistake made by another person. But we can decide whether to add another layer of anger to an already difficult situation.
This is not an argument for passivity. We should continue to question poor planning, demand accountability, and push for better systems. But while those larger problems are being addressed, we still have to navigate the daily realities in front of us.
Perhaps that is the lesson from a closed road. Sometimes the practical response is simply to find another route.
Perhaps Bangladesh needs better roads and better traffic management. But we also need better habits of dealing with one another: Less aggression, more patience, and a little more civility in everyday life.
Because when everyone is already losing time, there is little reason to make one another lose our peace as well.
Nazmun Naher is a water resources expert with extensive experience in regional and international integrated water resources management. She can be reached at [email protected].
