I need a seat to get from A to Beat

“Would you like our seats,” offered a young woman to Rebecca and me on a crowded London Underground Tube in January 2018. With a nod, her partner seconded the invitation. I had a pole and Rebecca a strap-handle so we said “Thanks but we’re OK.” “Are you sure?” she replied. “Yes, we’re sure. But thanks anyway.”

Two weeks later the other shoe dropped. Another young couple and this time on a crowded bus in Malta, a densely populated island country in the Mediterranean. Again, we politely declined and again were taken aback. Rebecca was born in 1951 and me in 1949 so we knew we were older. But our genes had given us cover. It was a shock to know that even our disguised-selves looked old enough for priority seating.

A second aha moment followed a week later on another packed Malta bus. Our destination was Dingli Cliffs. We boarded in Valleta, Malta’s capital city, for the one hour and 18 minute trip. Rebecca found a seat. I stood, for 78 bone-rattling minutes. And thought, for the first time, “I need a seat, to get from A to Beat.”

Please offer me a seat

A few months before the couple in London offered us their seats, Transport for London began a Travel Kind Campaign. One part of the campaign was a new Priority Seating sign posted in all London buses, trains and trams. Instead of the older signs with symbols of elderly, pregnant or disabled, this sign asks passengers to widen their vision for who might need help to get from A to beat.

And to prepare passengers to be asked to give up their seat. Transport for London has a Transport Accessibility link that describes the resources available for anyone that needs travel help. It includes this statement: “All buses, Tubes, trains, and trams have clearly marked priority seats for anyone who needs them. If one isn’t available, ask if someone will give up a seat.” For those travelers who might be reticent to ask, they can apply for a Please Offer me a seat badge.

Londoner Amanda Jacobs who has a musculoskeletal condition explained why the badge is so important to her.

The badge is so important to me personally because when someone looks up, sees I need to sit down and offers me their seat, I can relax and not worry about being injured and unable to live a full life for several months – just because I couldn’t get a seat on the bus, train or tube and had to stand up. Such a relatively small action by a fellow passenger respecting my needs can therefore have a hugely beneficial influence on my life for months to come.

From Transport for London’s web site

Personal autonomy

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life – to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you ant to be.

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p. 141

Toward the end of our four months in 2018 directing Luther College’s Malta program, I admitted to myself and then to Rebecca that I dreaded some of our weekend bus trips visiting Malta sites. The Dingli Cliffs trip intimidated and influenced what I felt I could and could not do. I was tip-toeing toward the recognition that, like Amanda, to be whole, to live a full life, I needed help.

The signs of our time

A few days ago Spotify delighted me with a song I had not heard for decades, Signs, from 1971, by The Five Man Electric Band. The song was a lament about how America’s signs excluded people, with its thematic line: “Sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside.” 50 years later, whether in London, Malta or America, many of our institutions’ signs waive whatever membership card may have been required in the past.

Instead, these signs welcome those who may have been excluded in the past. They seek, in Atul Gawande’s words, “to maintain the integrity of one’s life.” What has changed is not the goal of personal autonomy. But who gets to make that claim.