Yesterday the living room. Today the TV room. Tomorrow, hopefully, the social room.
The place I live doesn’t have a livingroom. We have a small and dark kitchen, 2 bathrooms and our bedrooms. 2 of my house-mates and I talk, but only when one of us knocks on the other person’s door, the 3rd and final hose-mate I’ve never really seen except when I knocked on his door to introduce myself as his new neighbor, otherwise I just hear his TV.
Not having a common social space makes this place into a place to live rather than a home. If a family lived here, we would hardly have any contact with each other whatsoever, seeing as it consists of 3 bedrooms and narrow hallways. No place to naturally socialize and talk, only these corridors and the tiny kitchen.
I’ve been thinking about how to make it into a space where it’s more natural to gather and socialize, but can’t come up with a solution without someone having to move so that we can knock a wall or two down. If I saw any of my flat mates on the street, then I would probably not recognize them, seeing that I hardly have any contact with them. Sure, we are a temporary constellation, but that doesn’t make it less important to build up bonds.
If a modern day family moved in here how would they arrange it to make it a home? It would be impossible without some serious remodeling. I can see every member of the family leaving for their own enclosed space as fast as the dinner has been served and eaten. What sort of impact does that have on the individual? Does ones room become one’s castle or one’s involuntary prison? That, I believe differs from person to person, but it has become one’s safe zone. A place where people from the outside has to knock on the door and ask for permission if they want to enter. That makes that door a sort of obstacle that one has to encounter before one encounters the person behind it. Everyone wants, and normally needs, the possibility to get some time for their selves. Some people go to their room, where they can stay for hours on end without any interaction with others aside from computer and phone communication, while others go to the bathroom with a good book. How big of a “me” space does a person really need, and how big or small of a space is it mentally healthy to have?
Every time I try to answer a question, I just come up with a thousand more.
Back to the living room, which aught to be what the word implies, a place to live, not just to breathe.
Every apartment and house that has a so-called living room seems to have made it into an altar for the television. Sofas and chairs directed towards the screen and away from real eye contact. Turn off the TV and it’s still hard to hold a normal conversation without having to twist ones body into uncomfortable positions.
I don’t see myself as radical when I say that a home with a good kitchen and/or living room without the presence of a television seems to have a tendency to make people more inclined to interact with one another and get more things done. One can say that the way the living room is working at the moment has turned it from being a space for social interaction into an anti-social space. Weather or not this means that the way we interact with people we meet on the street would change if we got rid of the TV or not, that I can not say. But what I can say is that from what I’ve noticed, the people who have decided to look away from the TV and see eye to eye with the people around them, seem to have a more open mind toward, and show more interest in, the people they meet, disregarding if it is a stranger or a friend.
