It is not good that the man should be alone.

When I was young, I said, "No apartments. Ever." The thought of sharing a wall with a stranger was odious. To be able to hear their every move, and not be able to run into some back room and get away from it all--unthinkable. 

Do you know what God said in the Garden of Eden, though? "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18).

I think that means a million things. One of the things I think it means is that we should all live in apartments.

Lately, I've been driving around and it seems like every empty space is being filled up with with big, clean houses with big yards. It seems terribly excessive. Row on row of duplicate kitchens and sitting rooms. We could all sit together. We could all eat together. Instead, we need a lot of grass between us--grass that we hardly ever walk or sit on. Grass that we're a slave to cutting every week of the summer.

When you live in an apartment, you can hear people walking above you. You can hear them talking. You know when they turn the water on. And as you lay in bed at night, you know someone is near. You breathe in humanity and you breathe it out for them to breathe in.

It is not good that the man should be alone. We should all live in tiny places one on top of another. We should always have to parallel park our cars between two strangers. We should all live in great old houses that have been home to dozens before us, so we will have their ghosts to keep us company.