Can you imagine how different you’d be if you’d grown up differently? Suppose your parents had been much poorer, or much wealthier, than they were. Suppose you’d gone to a very different school. Perhaps the people around you might have all had very different values and beliefs. Suppose you’d suffered a dreadful bereavement as a child (or that you hadn’t…). Maybe you’d grown up with a serious disability (or without one…). What if you’d had lots of siblings, or none at all? Lived in a war zone, or miles from anywhere, or moved around every few months, or lived in care homes?

These things shape us, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. Once we’re adults, we can make a choice to live a decent life, to live by the Rules, but we’ll still be deeply influenced by what we’ve been through.

And that’s not only true of you and me. It’s true of everyone you meet, work with, make friends with, pass in the street. That barista who just served you coffee, your boss’s husband, the garage mechanic, your child’s schoolteacher, your next-door neighbour, they all walked a completely unique path to get to where they are now. And pretty well every one of them has some bad bits in their past – as well as lots of good stuff I hope. Actually some people have precious little good stuff.

People come in and out of our own lives, often momentarily, and it’s easy to be lulled into feeling that they only exist while they’re crossing our path. For us, that’s true in a sense. But then we only exist as a brief flash for them. In fact everyone has a completely original and personal story, and all the chapters of that story shape the person they are. If we don’t know that whole story, how can we judge the person? Perhaps they are the way they are because of some great trauma in their past, or a deep grief, or a sense of loss, or a frustration they can never satisfy.

So next time someone winds you up, or irritates you, or strikes you as being weak or arrogant or foolish or pompous or selfish or over-competitive or inhibited or pushy, just remember that you have no idea by what route they got here, and maybe they’ve been through things that you can’t imagine.

Yes, we’re all responsible for our own actions. Yes, there’s no excuse for certain kinds of behaviour – those that negatively affect other people – but that’s a much bigger ask of some people than of others, and we can’t know what each person’s story is. Perhaps they have no excuse for being selfish, thoughtless, unkind, intolerant, aggressive. Or perhaps they have no idea that’s how they appear, or have no understanding that these are bad things, or even are doing their best to change but have the odds stacked against them.

For us, as Rules players, that means we need to stop, think, and be more tolerant. Better to be forgiving to someone who doesn’t deserve it than to judge someone who deserves a break.