It is 7:15 on a week­day morn­ing. Traf­fic crawls along the East­ern Main Road as com­muters inch to­wards an­oth­er work­day. A dri­ver abrupt­ly cuts in­to the next lane with­out sig­nalling. Horns pierce the morn­ing air. A PH taxi stops un­ex­pect­ed­ly to col­lect a pas­sen­ger, bring­ing traf­fic to a stand­still. Two mo­torists ex­change an­gry words through open win­dows. Just me­tres away, plas­tic bot­tles, food con­tain­ers and oth­er dis­card­ed waste clog a road­side drain that will al­most cer­tain­ly over­flow with the next heavy down­pour.

This is not an un­usu­al morn­ing. It is a fa­mil­iar scene re­peat­ed dai­ly across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Be­yond the con­ges­tion lies some­thing more trou­bling. Im­pa­tience has re­placed cour­tesy. Rules are in­creas­ing­ly treat­ed as op­tion­al. Pub­lic spaces are ne­glect­ed as lit­ter and il­le­gal dump­ing be­come com­mon­place. On so­cial me­dia, thought­ful di­a­logue is too of­ten over­shad­owed by out­rage, mis­in­for­ma­tion and per­son­al at­tacks. In many work­places and com­mu­ni­ties, frus­tra­tion ap­pears to have be­come the de­fault re­sponse to every­day chal­lenges.