Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Shared spaces tend to run on unwritten rules: which side to walk on, where to wait for a lift, how close to stand at a shelf.
“Go and sit somewhere, the guests are coming.”
Underneath, a belief can settle: “I have to earn a spot before I stand in it.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Step aside at once, apologising before anyone else speaks
- Hold still for a second, then move and replay it for hours
- Keep close to the wall in every corridor from then on
- Leave the shop before finding the thing on the shelf
- Say something sharp back, then feel it all the way home
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
Reading a label in the aisle
A crowded supermarket in Hong Kong. You stop for a second to read a label, and a man pushes past with his trolley, muttering “You're in the way.” You step back quickly, apologising, though he's already gone. You stand by the shelf, heart thumping, cheeks hot, and the rest of the shopping feels rushed and uncomfortable. For a moment, everything else goes quiet.
Don't take up space
Underneath sits a rule: 'I shouldn't take up space.' It sounds polite and considerate. Most people would nod along to it. But look at what it does: it makes you shrink in every crowded place. Standing still to think, taking your time, even existing in a busy aisle starts to feel like a nuisance, and you rush through the world trying not to be noticed.
Why being considerate feels good
We hold it because being considerate feels like being good. Lots of people grow up with some version of this rule, and it often made good sense at the time. Maybe you were told as a child not to be a bother. Maybe stepping aside is usually your job. Either way, wanting to be considerate isn't silly. It comes from caring about others. That deserves kindness, not blame.
Shrinking with each sharp remark
Each sharp remark makes you smaller. It happens slowly, so it can be hard to notice. None of it shows from the outside, but you feel it. You apologise for being in places. You rush through shops. You avoid busy areas. Your own needs, like a moment to read a label, start to feel like inconveniences, and you leave crowded places tense and tired.
Is shrinking worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has making yourself small ever made crowded places feel easier? Or has it mostly made you more tense? Everyone takes up space; it's part of being in a shop at all. Nobody can know what kind of day a stranger is having. Either way, one muttered remark isn't the measure of your right to be there. Is holding this rule so tightly worth it?
A moment, like anyone
Letting go doesn't mean ignoring others in a crowd. It means taking a moment is allowed for you, too. You can stand, read the label, and move when you're ready. It doesn't happen all at once, and it doesn't need to. It can start small, one moment at a time. That's where some peace comes back: you get to be in the world without apologising for being there.
Being pushed, grabbed, followed, threatened or picked on for who you are is something else, and worth taking seriously; moving away can be the safe choice.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleI shouldn't take up space.
A new rule to tryI'm allowed to take a moment, like anyone.
Three small days
Try it for 3 days #
- Day 1
Take a moment in a shop without rushing
- Day 2
Notice one time you apologised when you didn't need to
- Day 3
After a sharp remark, take one slow breath
Want to talk it through?
“Where exactly were you standing, and what were you doing there before the words came?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
Four words in a narrow space #
An office corridor with a coffee in hand, a supermarket aisle while a label is being read, a lift in a Doha mall as the doors slide open, a busy pavement in Mumbai with a map on the screen. “You're in the way,” and nowhere feels like the right place to stand.
It rarely says where to go instead. The space was shared, the moment was ordinary, and the words turn standing still into a fault, as if the spot had needed permission before anybody stood in it.
Where were you standing when you last heard it?Talk about this ›
What were you doing there, and where did you end up moving to?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
The quick step sideways before any thought #
Some people step back at once, apologising to the wall as much as to the person. Some freeze, unsure which way is clear. Others hold their ground for a beat and feel the heat of it for the rest of the walk. None of that needs explaining.
Being told a space isn't yours tends to register fast, before any thinking. The thinking often arrives later, in the lift or on the stairs, with the question of where exactly would have been the right place to stand.
What did you do in the second after the words?Talk about this ›
Step aside, freeze, say sorry, say something back?Talk about this ›
What might that first move say about the moment?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
It's about a path, but it lands on the person #
“Could I get past, please?” is about a path. The words about being in the way skip the path and describe the person as an obstacle, as if they were a box left in the corridor rather than someone with a reason to be there.
Shared spaces tend to run on unwritten rules: which side to walk on, where to wait for a lift, how close to stand at a shelf. The rules change from building to building, and a newcomer can't see them until someone points one out, sometimes sharply.
If the words had only been about the path, what would the plain sentence have been?Talk about this ›
And does a spot on a pavement really say anything about the person standing in it?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the voice starts choosing where to stand #
Hear it often enough and it can start first. “Don't stand there.” “Move, someone's coming.” “Find a corner and wait.” The stepping aside can happen before anybody has come anywhere near.
The stranger is gone, but the checking stays switched on. Some people start picking spots by how little room they take, waiting for lifts off to one side, or reading labels from the end of the aisle so nobody has to squeeze past.
Whose voice does it use when it tells you to move?Talk about this ›
Is it the stranger in the corridor, or one from a busier room, a long time ago?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
For some people, keeping clear started early #
“Don't stand in the kitchen doorway.” “Go and sit somewhere, the guests are coming.” Some people grew up in busy homes where a child's job at gatherings was to keep out from underfoot, and a good child was one nobody tripped over.
In some families, space was tight and the day was full, and the reasons for that vary from home to home. What a child can quietly conclude is that taking up room is a nuisance, and that the best spot is always the edge of things.
When did you first learn to check whether you were in someone's way?Talk about this ›
Which room was it, and who was usually moving through it?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A quiet rule about room #
Underneath, a belief can settle: “I have to earn a spot before I stand in it.” Some people carry a quieter version: “My job is to keep out of the way,” or “I have to fit in around everyone else.”
Rules like this rarely feel like rules. They feel like courtesy, like standing to one side on an escalator. That's exactly why they're worth looking at: a rule that feels like simple politeness can end up deciding where someone stands in every room.
Some people trace a rule like this to a crowded home in early years; some never find where it came from. Either way, it can be looked at. Which rooms does it still fit, and which not?
What it costs
What it costs
What keeping to the edge can cost #
It can mean leaving a shop without what was needed, standing at the back of a room where nothing can be seen, or waiting for the third lift so nobody has to shuffle over. Some people give up their place in a room long before they have stopped wanting it.
There is a quieter price too. Checking every corridor and doorway for where to stand takes steady effort, and it can make ordinary places like offices and shops feel like somebody else's. Over a year, that can add up to many places never quite settled into.
Not out of weakness. Keeping watch over your own spot all day is tiring.
What has it cost in the last year: a view missed, a thing not bought, a room that never felt like it had space for you?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years at the edge of the room #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “I have to earn a spot before I stand in it” is loud. What is in it: the corridors, the lifts, the shops, the places stood in and the places skipped? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Maybe a lift let go because it looked full, a shelf browsed from the far end, a meeting watched from the doorway, a crowded bookshop left without looking round. Some of it may sound familiar, some not at all.
Nothing here needs an answer yet, and the picture can be put aside at any point. What, if anything, do you notice?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
In whose way, and for how long? #
“In the way” describes a second in a path, not a person. Anyone standing anywhere in a busy place is in somebody's way at some moment: the person holding the lift, the one reading the board, the one who stopped to answer a call.
Shared spaces are meant to be shared, and standing in them is part of using them. The path usually cleared within seconds, while the words can stay around far longer than the moment they were about.
Another way in: if a friend had been standing in that same spot, doing that same thing, would they have looked like an obstacle to you, or simply like someone who was there?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What a slow replay of the corridor shows #
When some people replay the moment slowly, they notice how narrow the space really was: a one-person corridor, a lift doorway, an aisle with a trolley already in it.
Others notice everybody else in that space: people stopping to chat, a delivery trolley parked across the aisle, another shopper reading the same shelf. Sometimes the space was truly tight, and sometimes the words picked one person out of many.
Set beside the words, what does that moment actually show?Talk about this ›
How many other people passed through that spot that day without a word, and what made this moment the one that stayed?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need to find the perfect spot #
Making peace doesn't mean agreeing that you were a nuisance, or pretending the words didn't sting. It means one stranger's sentence gets less say over how the rest of the trip goes, and over where you stand next.
Some people find it lighter once they stop looking for the one spot where nobody could ever need to pass. That spot doesn't exist in a busy place, and the search keeps a stranger's words switched on in every doorway.
What would it be like to let the words stay theirs, and keep only the useful part, like stepping aside when someone asks, without also stepping aside from the room itself?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A roomier sentence to keep nearby #
If “I'm in the way” has been running for years, there's no need to fight it head on. Some people keep a line like this ready instead: “Shared places are for sharing, and stepping aside for a second is all a path needs.”
It doesn't have to feel true. It's only a line some people try on, and some find that, said quietly in a busy lift, it lets them stay where they are standing a moment longer.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that makes room for other people without giving away all of yours?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can be left in the corridor #
Not every sharp word in a doorway needs a comeback or a string of apologies. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and left where it was said, like a door swinging shut somewhere behind.
That isn't giving up. It's choosing where the day's energy goes, and some people say it leaves more room for what they were there to do: the meeting, the shopping, the person waiting on the corner.
Leaving it in the corridor doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means it doesn't have to come along into the next lift, the next aisle or the next room.
If it loosened
And if the rule gave a little room #
Imagine, only as a picture, the rule a notch quieter. People still need to get past sometimes, but standing somewhere is simply standing somewhere. What is the first thing that feels different?
Small things can be enough, such as reading a label to the end, waiting for a lift from the middle of the lobby, or pausing on a pavement to check the map without an apology. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. What you notice is yours, however small it seems. If you'd like to look at it more closely, a chat is one tap away.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things to try #
- Name it in your head: “that's the in-the-way line again”
- Ask yourself quietly: how long was the path blocked, really?
- Notice one place today where standing still felt ordinary
- Picture a friend in that same spot, and notice what you would think
- Notice one small thing you wanted in that shop or corridor, however small
Small, private and optional. Try whichever one fits the day.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- Where exactly were you standing, and what were you doing there before the words came?
- In the second after, where did you move to, and did it feel like enough room?
- Which place in your life has always had room for you, without you having to ask?
- On an ordinary day when the earn-your-spot rule is loud, what would you still be putting off?
- If it eased a little, what would you notice first in a crowded place?