Saints and Sinners: Providing just enough space
One of our favorite families is the Murphys. Paul and his wife, Pat, have 13 children. Once when we were there for supper, 21 of us gathered happily around two tables in the kitchen to eat — the 15 in their family and our six.
I was going to say we “crowded” around the kitchen tables, but the word crowded carries an unpleasant connotation. If someone you like is sitting close to you, that’s not crowding. As we all know, this can be quite a pleasant experience. Crowding is something else.
Much as I like a lot of room, I would rather occupy a small room with a company of happy people than be in a large room with people I am not particularly fond of.
Karl Lorenz, the German scientist, says, “I strongly doubt whether you can condition man so that he does not become nervous and neurotic when he is crowded.”
Lorenz said it has been his experience that “people who live miles from the nearest neighbors and are not overwhelmed by social contacts show the greatest human kindness.”
He tells a story from the days when he lived in Munich.
“We had as house guests,” he says, “an American couple who lived in the wilds of Wisconsin. Just as we sat down to supper, the doorbell rang and I, who was overfed with human contacts, said with irritation, ‘Who is that now?'”
His guests, said Lorenz, were shocked.
“To be less than overjoyed when the doorbell ran was incomprehensible to these people who lived deep in the country. It made me realize how much I had become a victim of overcrowding.”
(For myself, I must say that I never visit a farm without feeling that farm-life holds one of the secrets hidden from modern man. The space and great quiet of the farm renews my spirit.)
Though Lorenz is undoubtedly right, it probably ought to be said that the reason we dislike crowding is that by and large we dislike the people who are crowding us. We don’t “love our neighbors as ourselves.”
Whether or not that may be true, overcrowding is one of the evils of modern society. In the ghetto, we are told that murder is the most likely cause of death for young men. Many of these killings, some social scientists say, can be laid to overcrowding. There are too many people per square foot on our shrinking planet. It eventually takes its toll on our frayed nerves.
One of the newspapers I worked for was located in a begrimed structure in downtown Cleveland. There was no air-conditioning and the city’s dirt blew in through the open windows in the summer. Our arms got black from the soot on our desks and we stirred our coffee with copy pencils.
But we outgrew the old building and moved into an airy, well-lighted structure of concrete and glass. If we were overcrowded where we were and needed more space, now we had it.
Somehow, a lot of the love which permeated the old place stayed back there to live with the ghosts of those happy years on Ninth Street.
The moral of the story is that good company — not plenty of room — is the secret of happiness. I once got a card on Father’s Day from one of my boys who penned these words, “May good company continue to surround you. Company is thought’s best sustenance and stimulus.”
The Murphys would understand.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)