a room of one's own

I've had a great deal of trouble finding a roommate over the past few weeks. This morning, as I made myself breakfast in the morning peace, I thought about living alone. The quiet was nice.

Until I spent the first eight months of 2007 living alone in London, and since, I have always lived in groups. At home, I had siblings; at sixteen, I moved to boarding school; and I've always lived with roommates in college and in New York. I really like living with people, and the prospect of living alone has generally not appealed to me.

Still, I was reminded this morning that living alone, too, can be a positive experience. Certainly, I think it can mean more time spent on personal reflection, and I think this leads to meaningful growth. Furthemore, there is a sort of personal resilience that allows one to be free of social dependence on others, and this is forcibly developed when living alone. I've learned in recent years that it is a valuable skill to be alone without being lonely.

Living alone can also make things easier from a practical perspective. There are no arguments about standards of cleanliness, use of common space, or acceptable volumes at which to play music, for example. One can live how one wishes to, absolutely. On the other hand, to fall back on this as an argument strikes me as a little self indulgent. Shouldn't we be comfortable with the idea of compromise, and accustomed to living with rules that we can't set autonomously? When viewed this way, living alone could seem to prevent invaluable development in interpersonal skills.

Of course, much of this is cultural as well. Friends from Toronto are often surprised to hear that I still live 'with roomates', and am not on my own, so many years out of school. In New York, it is assumed that most people will live with roommates, out of necessity. In more traditional south Asian households (as an example), people can easily go their entire lives without living alone. Many people will live with their parents until they are married. Personally, as much as I love to have people around, I am really glad to have lived at least semi-autonomously (read: not with my parents).

My only point is that there is a spectrum of expectations and experiences, and how we judge them comes down in large part to our individual biases and preferences. I think I'd get used to living alone, and may even enjoy it. Still, at this point, I really just enjoy being around people too much to make that leap.