Jennifer Horgan: It is natural to want more space but does it just make us miserable?

For one thing, she still has religious faith. There are little marks of Catholicism throughout her Parisian flat: crosses; angels above her daughters’ beds; a statue of Holy Mary. It seems like a blessing — to still have personal faith in Catholicism despite the institution’s failings.

But another thing about this woman’s life struck me over the last two weeks besides her faith in God. She exists in a very small space. And she shares that small space with three other people.

When I first arrived at her apartment, five floors up and no lift, hands buzzing from the weight of our suitcases, I took a long gulp. A single toilet announced itself from behind the opened front door. A single sink and shower, some distance away, connected the small living space and the second bedroom.

Would we make it? I wondered — a family of five, accustomed to far more space and, crucially, three separate bathrooms?

And as we quickly realised, there was no space beyond her apartment either. At home in Ireland, we open a private front door onto a green area. Space abounds. Paris can feel stifling, cramped. But it positively hums with communality. From the most beautiful parks and cathedrals to the dark corridors of the Metro, everything belongs to everyone. Museums have regular days of free entry. The mantra of the famous Shakespeare & Company bookshop says it all: Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.

There is a sense in Paris, that you are among both the ordinary and the divine. It’s intoxicating, the lack of exclusivity, the mix of the ugly and beautiful, soaring statues and spires, low-flying pigeons, scurrying rats. French people tellingly kiss the cheeks of near strangers. Space feels shared in Paris, even space of the personal kind.

Ireland is different, isn’t it? Certainly on the faith front. I know few people my age who have kept it. We also have a very different perception of space.

 Paris is the most densely populated city in Europe. Ireland is by no means full and yet people spin the rhetoric that it is. And I wonder if we avoid space-sharing more than is good for us? 

How many already wealthy individuals block planning? It is natural to want more space but have we forgotten what enough space looks like? Before my house swap, I think maybe I had.

Even with a roomy enough house, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wanting more, dreaming about those massive kitchens people have nowadays, the size of small countries, boasting their very own islands. 

Success in Ireland is absolutely calculated by square meter. If your children have to share a room, you drop a rung in the social ladder. 

His and Hers bathrooms are rumoured to be the secret to a perfect marriage. People joke about it, but we often aspire to spend as little time as possible in the same room as other people, even our closest people.

The ’working from home’ culture feeds the same monster. It is more convenient, more economically productive and less irritating to avoid people altogether.

But does it also make us a little more miserable? 

Once we get past enough, and fail to recognise it, does more space make us less human even, by separating us from other humans, our mirror images, our reminders of what we are, terribly vulnerable — and mortal?

Our two weeks in this woman’s apartment weren’t perfect. We fought and bickered as families do, maybe even more than usual, but by the end of it we felt like we’d achieved something. We also spent hours around a tiny table playing cards and Exploding Kittens. It felt good. It felt like enough.

I’m not going to lie, luxury feels pretty good too and I’m the first person in line if there’s a night’s stay in a fancy hotel going. But luxury is defined by fewer people and more space. If luxury becomes an everyday thing, does it become a kind of death denial? A trick? It’s possible to believe one is somehow different in luxurious settings. It’s conversely impossible to deny one’s mortality inside a throng of people, a collection of limbs, individual systems becoming one, moving as a whole.

Our one night’s stay in Disneyland Paris, away from this woman’s apartment, catapulted us back into the life of luxury. We somehow, without intention, managed to book ourselves into the ‘Compass Club.’ And so we were ceremoniously plucked from the winding queues and escorted to a private check-in. My husband was seated at a giant rosewood table; myself and the children were ushered into a private lounge, offered complementary drinks. My daughter said it felt like we were in the first class section of the Titanic.

But walking out of our Parisian apartment we moved from one shared space to another.

 I would never dare to romanticise poverty and its impact, but when we get to the extreme ends of wealth, what is the impact?

 I mean, how must it feel to leave an absolute mansion and walk down an average city street?

There’s even a name for it now, what mega rich people avoid: touchpoints, basically interactions with other people. The richer you are, the fewer touchpoints you should have to encounter. 

Emma Beddington’s recent piece in The Guardian highlights this, how the super wealthy desire less and less contact with other humans. She begins by referencing a sales pitch for a private jet company, Vista Jet, who promise to reduce touchpoints from the 700 you experience flying in a commercial jet, to just 20 flying private. The super-rich seek to avoid the tiny annoyances we experience every day — waiting in a line for the toilet, the checkout person not knowing a price — but all of these things, are healthy reminders of our humanity. Even inside our own homes, we’re brainwashed into thinking we need more and more distance from one another to be happy and to feel successful.

I’m happy to be back in my own space but I hope to stop craving something bigger and recognise enough. I hope to become a little less of an arsehole when faced with small inconveniences too, because, as it turns out, I want the touchpoints, within my home and beyond it. I want to know that although I’m small, infinitesimally so, I’m part of a much bigger, and, most importantly, shared humanity.