Let me set the scene. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and I’m making my routine jaunt between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. This is a corridor lined with glass towers, utes with surfboards jutting from their trays and train carriages packed to the gills with people who look like they’re in a hurry to be anywhere but here.

I’m 63, but don’t let the paperwork fool you – I’m still more likely to injure myself playing sport than struggling to get out of a chair.

Last week, on two different journeys, women in their forties bent the world ever so slightly off its axis by standing up and waving me towards their seats, as though ushering royalty to the throne.

Eyebrows raised, bags clasped, a knowing shake of the head towards the seated ranks of the 20-somethings whose bottoms were planted against the worn fabric. You know the sort: Bluetooth earphones in, eyes locked on screens, thumbs dancing a TikTok waltz. Not a flicker of movement. Not an eyelash batted in my direction.

I stood there for a moment – caught between gratitude and indignation, as uncomfortable as a man trying to remember if he wore mismatched socks. Because I don’t feel old. At least, not the sort of old where an able-bodied woman, possibly hammered by pilates and weighted with childcare, feels compelled to offer me her seat. I’ve skied black runs in Canada, I’ve almost managed to fix the leaking dishwasher and I’ve even had a go at running recently. I am not, in my estimation, decrepit. And yet here I was, being treated as something fragile.

There are layers of emotion to this. The gratitude part is almost involuntary – the well-trained “thank you” burbled from my lips as I collapsed into the seat, all the guilt of a man who’s just accepted a biscuit he doesn’t want because he knows it’s rude to refuse. But alongside gratitude bubbles a different emotion: indignation, blunted by vanity.

Is this how things are now in 2025? It used to be a given – one stood for a woman, one stood for someone with a crutch or a pram, or yes, someone who looked old enough to have watched Countdown on a black-and-white telly.

Chivalry made sense when the pecking order was clear. But what have we come to when the only people showing a hint of gallantry are women just shy of my daughter’s age, while those who could leap to life with far less effort are rooted to their seats?

It begs the question, who should give up their seat – and why don’t they?

There’s a cocktail of uncomfortable truths here. One part is empathy: those who’ve watched their parents age, who’ve toted groceries for an elderly neighbour, feel a pinch of sympathy when someone walks the carriage with the subtle sway of the hips that signals “I’d love to sit down.” The other ingredient is a dollop of social expectation (or embarrassment): the quiet pressure of judgment from others watching, measuring us by how quickly we rise, or how stubbornly we cling to our seat.

As for those shiny-faced younger passengers – well, there’s an element of self-absorption writ large. They’re welded to their phones, their music, their own little spheres of importance. Perhaps they’ve never been taught, or perhaps they don’t want to acknowledge a world where they owe anyone anything. Or maybe, to give them benefit of the doubt, they genuinely don’t see you unless you’re thrust directly into their thumbnail’s immediate field of vision.

The women who did stand up for me didn’t just offer a seat – they offered a passing look of disdain for their younger compatriots, a theatrical shake of the head, tutting away as if to say, “Whatever happened to manners?” It was a subtle performance, a silent declaration that they, at least, remembered some code of conduct from a world that came before hashtags.

But what should we do, as older Australians? As soon as I took that seat, spending a few blessed stops swivelling my knees, it struck me that we must tread a delicate path. To refuse is churlish – denying someone’s quiet act of generosity, perhaps even their own moment of feeling useful. But to accept must come with humility and an understanding: you’re not what your birth certificate makes you out to be, but neither are you immune to the shifting norms of the carriage.

Ultimately, the emotion that stops people offering seats, especially the young, is not cruelty – it’s detachment. Empathy is a muscle not exercised by endless scrolling, but by living, by noticing, by being slightly uncomfortable in order to make someone else comfortable.

In 2025, I think we should offer seats to those visibly in need – older people, those with disabilities, people carrying bags big enough to trip a cow. But we must do it without so much fuss, lest we embarrass the recipient into an early grave. And if, like me, you’re both grateful and indignant – remember that emotions are messy. Accept graciously. Offer thanks. And if you see someone younger strapped to a seat like a prospector on a gold nugget, cut them some slack. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll stand up for you next time.