Houses, the Gibran Way
We can design our residences room by room.
A more useful approach might be to go function by function.
Before that, what do we want from a house?
Comfort?
The place we come to rest?
Or, a showpiece or your tombstone by which you want others to remember you?
In Gibran’s evocative scheme, which I somehow like a lot,
” Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast”.
It is more like a ship that voyages than one that is moored.
It should help us live and not always rest.
The house is our larger body.
And if we think the house is where we abide, that may not work. Your proper abode is this universe. In a very real sense it is, because,
” …(the) boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night”
So, then, what is our residence? It is the place where we
- eat
- sleep
- love
- pray
- think
- work
- host
- read
- dance
and, if you like, where the cat roams around.
Ensure we have space enough for each of these.
One place without affecting the place for another.
Beauty it should have. Peace it should nurture.
It needs space enough for us not to bend our heads as we pass,
It should be strong enough for us to breathe freely without worrying about the walls cracking and falling down.