For the first seven years of our life together, my wife and I shared a one room studio apartment with a tiny kitchen and a bathroom.
There was a magnificent white cherry tree outside the window and a view over pasture that has now, unfortunately, been heavily built upon.
We didn’t have a great deal of money.
Fast forward to now.
We have more money.
We have a house with different floors and a number of rooms.
There is a small hedged garden which requires quite enough work, but not too much.
We are fortunate enough to live in the countryside with more cows than human beings.
Now here’s the thing:
In which abode do you think it was easier to communicate?
Answer: the studio.
If you only have one room, your interlocutor is obviously in the same room.
But the more rooms you have, the greater the chance that the person you want to talk to is in another room, on another floor, in the garden.
Communication becomes more complicated.
There is interference of all kinds: kitchen noise, bathroom noise, music, computers, mobile phones and so on.
There is more clutter in every sense of the word.
You have to repeat yourself a lot.
We actually enjoy staying at hotels and studios or taking cabins on ferries whilst travelling because it takes us back to those days when communication was simple and there was not a lot else in the room besides ourselves.
So my question to you is this:
What percentage of your conversations with your loved ones takes place in the same room?
If you feel frustrated because there is less than perfect communication with your partner or family, then this might be a place to start.
Particularly if you turn the mobile phone off.
May your life never become an endurance test!
Love
Richard
