I don't claim to be omniscient (often) nor even more qualified than anyone else to judge highly philosophical issues like purpose and meaning in everyday life.
However, I'd like to think I can generally understand the difference between living and breathing. I'm not so much talking about fulfilling the other segments of polite life, such as mastication and procreation, but the finer points, stress level, human contact, sometimes even a proverbial (or literal) brew or two.
Now, the difference is far from stark, or sedentary, and in fact, far from reason. A wise man once said, "happiness is nothing if you've no one to share it with", where as another wise man once said, "when you are happy, the last thing you need is people to snoz it all up." I disagree, on both fronts. Solidarity and solitary are the words of the day, being unified in compartmentalization. The issue at hand is balance, not philosophy.
Can on be happy without any drama, without argument? Can one be happy with it? Of course, that begs the greater question can on be happy at all... But I digress. People are required of any great leader, and owing to the fact that I'm always right, we shall assume that is one way to be truly happy. The issue comes not in removing oneself from the public, or from immersing oneself wholly into their sphere, but in managing their presence and reconciling it with your own mentality, ability, and most importantly, temperament.
One must first learn how to surrender personal rights and personal space, in doing so, one allows the entry of alien concepts and objects into ones lifestyle.
Second, one must learn their compatriots personal habits and ideals, and thus avoid stomping too hard on the toes of a boot poised to strike one's rear.
Third, one must learn to reconcile the major differences in these lifestyles, from sleep cycle to spending habits.
Once you have those locked down, the manipulation and extortion begins.
That is, unless you take the less manly Machiavellian route, and choose love, in which case, make cookies often, and pass the remote when the sad little man beside you fails to teef it from your serpent quick hands.
One may or may not spice this with cleanliness, generosity, and repeated inclusion of the aforementioned civilians in any and all diabolical and semi-legal plans for world domination.
That, my friends, is how to reconcile men with different talents, temperaments, and convictions, and allow a truly egalitarian and civil society, at least in the microcosm of flat mates.
