What is sonder?
"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 and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, 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." -John Koenig
John Koenig is the creator of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He defines neologisms for feelings that don't have an official name. If you have time, I suggest checking it out yourself. Out of all his definitions, his word sonder is most captivating in my opinion. It applies to everyone and becomes more thought provoking the more you think about it.
Individually, we continuously think of ourselves. This isn't out of being conceited. We constantly think about what we have done, what we are doing, and what we are going to do. We continuously succumb to our own worries and problems. We are not just our actions and problems but much much more. We are defined by our aspirations, desires, fears, flaws, interests, experiences, and whether we prefer sunrises or sunsets. We are not only our greatest ambitions but our tiny quirks. We are defined, by a multitude of things. It is only those who take the time to figure out all our parts that truly understand us. Only a handful of people in this world get into our own little worlds. You've heard that more than seven billion people live in this world. How many people do you truly know out of seven billion?
I have four extremely close friends that mean the world to me and are reading this article right now. There's no doubt there is one, two, or five people who you are connected to. Out of my four friends, zero of them attend my college. We manage to stay in touch though. We update each other on our lives and talk as if we never left each other. Through out life you just come across certain people and things just click. That's the thing about coming across certain people, it just happens. Whether you met them in work, class, through a friend, it seems extremely arbitrary and somehow that relationship grows with certain people. What about the people you meet, but never get to know? Even more so, what about the people you don't end up meeting? Who's next to you on the train? Who's that kid you past by on your college campus? It's not even just about the people you see, but the ones you don't as well. Seven billion lives are out there just as complex as your own.
When I was little, my father would take my sister and I to the mall a lot. When we got tired, we would rest on the benches. My father told me that when he saw people walk by he would try and imagine what their lives are like. I tried to do it too, but I found it difficult. I couldn't imagine someone's life just by looking at them. The possibilities are endless. You never really know people how they know themselves. You might think you do, but you don't. Throughout high school, I found myself hating on certain people with no logical reason. Sometimes, I didn't like the way they acted around their friends or I even found myself jealous of them. The truth is everyone has their own problems as I mentioned before. At times we get so caught up in our own problems we forget others have their own demons to fight too. No matter how perfect they may seem, there is always so much more to a person. There are deep underlying issues within each person. I am not saying that these need to be dug up and discovered. I'm saying they should be acknowledged for their existence. That's what sonder is.
I might be your best friend, classmate, or just a stranger. There are things you might or might not know about me. I like the color blue. I'm a night person. I get easily stressed out about keeping up in school. I struggle with what others think of me. I don't like thunderstorms because I feel like the sky is shouting at me. Sometimes I isolate myself too much. I think one of the coolest things is going to the beach at night to the point where you can't tell the divide between the night sky and the water.
We are the main characters in our own stories, getting into our own troubles and dramas. Sometimes we decide to stop and read other stories because we are interested. Sometimes other people decide to look into our own story. When other people decide to do this we have two choices. We close the book on them or we let them read. Other than our own story or the stories we choose to pick up, billions of stories exist. They continue to change and they continue being created. Isn't that something?
