As I was sitting on the train today, I looked at the girl sitting across from me. She was in an orange pea coat with pleather leggings. Her hair was pushed to the side, allowing her emerald green studded earrings to show. I quietly wondered where she was going and why she chose those earrings to wear today. I wondered if her parents took pictures of her throughout her childhood and what her best friend was like. Was she currently undergoing any hardships? Is she stressing over school the same way I am right now? I’ll never know, but that is the beauty of sonder.
Sonder isn’t recognized as a legitimate word in the dictionary, but somehow it is defined as “..the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries…” We always wonder what someone else’s life is like, but we never know what to call that moment.
It’s perpetually an amazing concept to think about. We never realize that the strangers around us live their lives just like we do. They wake up cranky and sloppily make their way to the bathroom to brush their teeth, too. They dread their morning commute just like we do. They have a favorite food and a favorite song, too. The best part of it all is that they wonder about our lives as well. There are so many people out there that we just don't know at all. It's funny how we never stop and smell the roses; we never stop to take in the moment of our wonder because we simply don't realize what we're doing.
Why do we do it? We’ll never know. The reasoning of the unspoken things we do are better left untouched. We will forever be strange passersby in strangers lives. To that girl on the train, I was probably “the redhead who needs to stop staring.” We’re nothing more than an extra in the background of everyone’s daily lives; and to me, that’s a beautiful thing. Everyone has their own stories and their own problems just like you and I do. Sit back one day and wonder ever so greatly of the invisible storyline you’re trying to depict about a stranger you’re near.
