Sonder

Have you ever sat at a red light where a stream of cars are driving by at an angle where you can see the people inside and wondered what the people may be thinking?  Or noticed a light on in a building in the distance and considered how the inhabitants may be feeling?  Everyone has their own unique experiences, their own personality. They’ve all loved, cried, been angry.  

All around us are individuals much like ourselves, yet also different and unique. They’ve all had things that make them laugh, dreams, sorrow, moments of happiness, and appreciations.  Many people passing you by on any given day could become close friends if you had the time to get to know them. 

The dictionary of obscure sorrows created a word called Sonder, which is defined as “the realization that everyone has a story.” Take a moment to watch the short video below.

“Sonder. You are the main character—the protagonist—the star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years. But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness. When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you’ll never be able to see. That you’ll never know exists. In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk.”

Your life can go many directions, and every fork in the road leads to different people in your life, and thus different experiences that would shape you in different ways. Perhaps years ago had you gone made a different choice on where to go for lunch you might have met someone that changed who you are today.

Try this sometime, go out somewhere and spot a random person walking in the distance and imagine that you are them. You look different, feel different, have experience things in a different way. You know different people, have different ambitions, have different sorrows, experience everything in a different way. And then think about ways that you may feel similar, and have the same sort of feelings in various situations.

Now imagine they spot you out of the corner of their eye while going about their day and move on by paying no mind, the same way you normally do to most people that move through your own field of vision. Consider all of the things you’ve experience in your life that were significant to you, your personal story and what it means.

They go their way, you go yours.

You’ll probably never see each other again, or if you do, you won’t even know it. But in taking some time to consider this, you’ll better appreciate the importance of the unnamed people you encounter.

Things are going on all around us, molecules and microscopic interactions surround us, stars are in the sky, people are experiencing life. Things are meaningful.

Likewise, you’re emotions are uniquely yours, and your journey is one of a kind. Nobody else in the world experiences the world exactly as you do and nobody ever will again. Your own experiences are unique and because of this they are worthy of treasuring, and so are everyone else’s.