I grew up in a small house. Once a cottage, the expanded house was still small. My sisters and I slept in the same room until I was about 16 and took over one of the other small cottages. Our house had no basement or central heating, and for years only the bathroom had a real door. I can still hear the reassuring, peaceful rumble of the oil burning space heater.
Do I feel deprived? Never did and do not now. The house provided warmth, a coziness you simply cannot find anywhere in 4,000 square feet. We were with family most of the time. We learned to provide space for one another, to get along. No one had to teach us how to share. No one could rush away in a sniffling huff and slam a door for emphasis. Want to be alone? Go walk the Lake Michigan beach. Oddly, anyone who did that returned in a near spiritual stillness.
The house was the product of two people who had just survived the Great Depression, and for me I believe it fundamentally prepared me for the 21st Century. After all, the last 40 years of the 20th Century failed to prepare us for what we face today, which, in essence, is a growing need to expand our lives within littler spaces (contradiction intended).
I feel sad for those who are “making do” or “doing the best we can” within “reduced” circumstances. Oh, the misery, the shame, the blushing humiliation. They need to get over it. If their self-definitions hinged upon the size of their homes – which is the case for too many – then they must find authentic substance for their personal meaning. Imagine the emptiness of a life based on floor space, places to avoid interacting with others, and personal space measured by the yard.
Besides, a large house must have multi-door garages, kidney shaped swimming pools, lawn care contracts, security systems, and fences intimidating enough to discourage intrusions – the costs of which further reduce your circumstances. Do you really need a “conversation” corner? How about the “sitting room?” If you have an agonizing need for a sitting room, well, you might consider extensive mental health therapy. What you are avoiding may not be that scary. On the other hand, perhaps you just opened the insurance bill for the backyard pool. Zowie.
While sitting, consider your many alternatives to the lifestyle shackling you to an empty idea.
Reduced circumstances may well be good for us. All of us. Reduced circumstances force us to examine our lives and explore our many options. Maybe – now pull your seatbelts tight – maybe space mortgages our futures and prevents choices which might be more eloquent. Just for starters, interaction with those we live with could be better than subsidizing our inability to relate to others. At a very critical level, we might begin to realize that spending money on things prevents us from acquiring and absorbing experience. What a concept. Experiencing the sitting room is a poor substitute for getting more education or seeing the pyramids.
The ultimate self-insult has become the rented storage garage. All the booty of our self-absorbed lifestyles that we cannot part with (but no longer serves us) goes into an out-of-sight aluminum alloy hidey hole. There the stuff no longer burdens our consciousness. It steadily pecks at our checking account and diminishes our options.
The strategy to exploit, to explore small space is universal. Most of us face the same challenge: How to live and flourish with less. Alas, you are not just surviving or managing your lives; you are designing lives and discovering ways to thrive.
Even today, when our family gets together, we crowd into a small space and talk. We can reach out and tap someone without getting up and reaching. Getting someone to pass the mustard is a challenge only because you must interrupt a long conversation to get a word in there somewhere. Only my mother will see you need mustard without being told. Mothers are like that. The intuitive notice comes equipped with a warning not to put mustard where you do not want it. It stains.
Ron Roat's View 