The houses we live in

I was driving around with a friend a few weeks ago and we were going around one of KL's more affluent areas called Bangsar just looking at pretty houses. Normally I can't stand any "affluent" area in KL, I find them completely charmless, pretentious and over the top. If houses in KL could speak, they'd be speaking in those annoying put on American accents and any conversation with these talking houses would be a series of humble brags about how its doors were designed by Gucci in Italy just because they were #blessed. But Bangsar is a different story. Bangsar is full of tiny houses tucked away in quiet little streets and they usually look like nothing but give it a couple of seconds and slowly you begin to realize the beautifully subtle details like vines growing on the fences and a bookshelf by the window that extends from floor to ceiling. But the downside of house-watching in the middle of the night is that you run the risk of looking like a stalker or criminal then realize that someone in that house is probably watching you and is contemplating calling the police. So you move on to the next house.

I think it's entirely true that the way houses look is an extension or a reflection of the people living in it and the start of this "reflection" starts when you try to develop into your own person. When I was a teenager, my room was exactly like me. My mother is a very clean person and would physically ache upon the sight of messiness so there was never clothes on the floor or an untidy desk. I simply wasn't allowed that privilege. Neither was I allowed to have posters on the wall because apparently I would damage the paint work so my walls were pristine as well. But, once you opened up my cupboard doors, you were faced with a mad collage of my favorite bands, actors (I was crazy about Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen) and weird so-called cool indie patterns I'd find in random magazines that I thought were cool and edgy. My clothes weren't allowed to be thrown on the floor so obviously my cupboard was never organized. The teenage mess instinct in me had to be let out somewhere, so instead of neat folded piles, I was faced with a mountain of clothes that I'd pick apart everyday to decide what to wear. I didn't mind at all. It was the same with my work desk. Sure, all my papers were put away into cute little boxes and files but inside those boxes and files was a tragic mess. My drawers were a nightmare of discarded worksheets, exercise books and I'd sift through that nightmare every night to find that single sheet of homework I'd need for the next day at school. So in essence, my teenage room was exactly like teenage me - controlled chaos. Organized, clean and presentable on the outside, thanks to an external force (aka my mother) but complete madness and disarray on the inside (aka the true me).

So fast forward to the present where I am house-snooping and wondering what the people who live in these beautiful houses were like. One house had a window large enough to show off its book shelf that was 2 storey's tall (ie from ceiling of the first level to floor of the ground level). I was in love. So many thoughts were running through my mind like, "Hey there, owner of beautiful house with dream library. What do you have there on that divine piece of architecture? The full Harry Potter set? The works of Homer and Shakespeare? Encyclopedias? Yo man, don't even hide if you've got the whole 50 Shades of Grey trilogy because it doesn't matter. All that matters is how wonderful it must be to come back to a beautiful house with all those books in your own comfort. What else do you like? What colors exist in that beautiful space? Do you have a garden or are you like me and plants just wither and die under your care?". The monologue was endless and continued from house to house.

Some of the houses were open enough for me to catch a quick glimpse of the people living inside them and thinking back,  I've realised that it's a strange thing to watch someone else live their everyday life. Isn't it weird that while you have your own thoughts and experiences and dreams, someone else has their own thoughts, experiences and dreams that are entirely different from yours. There is an entire monologue going on in their heads that is separate from yours. They see the world through a pair of eyes just like yours and yet, the things you both see are different. That person is sitting there on that couch that they are probably so used to sitting on and you are outside, watching them sit on that couch and thinking, "Hey, that looks comfy". Then I go back to my own couch in my own home that I am used to sitting on, living my own humdrum life giving it no second thought and I  remain acutely unaware that someone might just be watching me for just a minute thinking, "I wonder what it's like to be her. She looks really comfy in that space that she owns".

Again I think is a pretty solid conclusion about this strange life that we all live. On the outside, the things that we have and surround ourselves with seemingly reflect what we are on the inside. Some people keep books around, some people are tidy, some people only like the colours black and white but the things that led them to keep those books around or keep tidy or decorate with certain colours are all completely individual decisions made according to experiences and thoughts that we will never know of. But our own habits are made up of these similarly individual experiences and thoughts, and while we're so busy wondering about the lives of other people and how lovely it must be living in that space that they've created, there might be someone out there looking just as longingly into our lives wondering what it's like to live in ours.