A
Small Space
Talk
show icon, Oprah Winfrey recently had a show on how to creatively design a
small space. This show was like any
other one, but at the close of the show Oprah asked this very thought provoking
question that remains on my mind even as I sit her writing this piece. The
question she posed to viewers worldwide was, “How much space does one really
need?” Personally, my first response was
A LOT!
Anyway, I guess that little small voice found inside
each one of us condemned me and caused me to feel selfish about my initial
response. That night as I lay in bed,
that question continued to haunt me and replay itself over and over in my mind,
“How much space does one really need?” As I lay there, I began to analyze this
question with deeper meaning.
Many of us have graduated from “the more the
merrier, and the bigger the better schools of thought.” Society has trained us to measure worth by
the amount of “stuff” a person has.
Often times, we as a society get so busy chasing “the all- American
dream” that we often miss out on some of
the simplicities of life. For example,
watching the innocence of child’s play, listening to the sounds of birds
cheerfully chirping in a tree, feeling
the warm sun on our face.
Oprah’s guest humbled me to say the least. One guest,
let’s call her “Ann,” in every bit of her 250 sq. ft. space, said she could not
dream of living anywhere else. She went on to say that living amongst her
family and friends was priceless- and no amount of space could match that.
Another
family, let’s call them “the Smith’s,”
dwelling was equally about the same size as “Ann’s” in square footage. However, the thing that impressed me the most
about this story was that this couple and their young child managed to coexist
and function (happily) as a family in what many of us would deem to close for
comfort. The couple admitted, candidly,
that the biggest obstacle with living small is finding space for new
things. “No matter how much we like
something, if we don’t use it in our day to day activities, we decide together
that it is probably something that we could do without.” They attributed
communication as the key element that keeps their home and relationship
synchronized. Oprah jokingly asked the
couple, “So, what do you do when either one of you gets angry at the other.”
“There is a coffee shop right next to our apartment, and when we need a cooling
off period, I just go there,” the wife cheerfully responded. Wait a minute… my thinking has always been
just the opposite. We all know someone
who ended a courtship citing “needing space” as the very reason.
Why
would a person want to live in a house no bigger than a parking space? This one guest said that he was tired of
spending thousands of dollars making mortgage payments every month. His remedy?
Moving into a space that closely resembled a portable storage unit found
in the backyard of many homes. This
guest explained that he would rather
spend his money on extra-curricular things that he enjoyed doing. I must admit, the look of his tiny “house on
wheels” was “pretty darn cute” and charming
from the outside. It reminded me of a
cozy, English cottage. It was adorned
with subtle tan paint, with rustic trim around the sides and windows. It was
equip with a little porch where the
guest admitted to spending the majority of his time reading. With no inside
plumbing and a little space heater, he concluded that life could not have been
any better.
Many
of us associate happiness with things…
“I will be happy when I get a… or I can’t
truly be happy unless I have a…”
The guest on the Oprah Show boldly challenged this way of thinking. What they taught me was that space does not
define happiness, but true happiness defines a space.
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