To Ponder Sonder

I rifled through my giant bins of pre-iPhone pho­tographs. My col­lege besties were com­ing for a sleep­over and it’s always a fun game to look back at the way we were. I found a hand­ful of pho­tos, big hair, and pegged jeans car­bon-dat­ing us to the ear­ly ’90s. There is one pho­to I par­tic­u­lar­ly love, show­ing the four of us, arms slung around each oth­er. We look radi­ant and why wouldn’t we? We were young and unen­cum­bered, our biggest wor­ry pass­ing Organic Chemistry or fig­ur­ing out what to wear to the Friday night frat par­ty. We were glo­ri­ous­ly unaware, with no idea what was com­ing down the pike. The divorces, the deaths, the mis­car­riages, the shit­show that is mar­riage and par­ent­ing and menopause and liv­ing in a world that seems to have an expi­ra­tion date were all in the unknow­able, dis­tant future.

This pho­to has ragged edges where I cut it before glu­ing it in my scrap­book. You can see a shoul­der just past Gwen’s face, someone’s hand around her waist. A some­one I had appar­ent­ly cut out of our pic, the 1995 ver­sion of Photoshop. 

I can’t stop think­ing about that some­one. Who was it? Are they still liv­ing? What is their dai­ly life like? Which of their dreams were dashed and which came to fruition? What’s their favorite book? What’s the most beau­ti­ful thing they ever saw? Do they believe in magic? 

I won­der how many times I have inad­ver­tent­ly pho­to-bombed someone’s oth­er­wise per­fect fam­i­ly pho­to at the Eiffel Tower or the Vatican. And when they gaze at the framed pic, do they see a sliv­er of my calf or my wild, curly hair and won­der the same things about me?

There’s a term for this feel­ing. Sonder, or the sud­den real­iza­tion that each ran­dom passer­by is liv­ing a life as vivid and com­plex as our own. 

John Koening (rhymes with rain­ing) is a Minnesotan author who grew up in Switzerland. European lan­guages have far more words than English to describe var­i­ous emo­tions and states of being. When Koening returned to the states as an adult, he invent­ed words for emo­tions that cur­rent­ly lack words, ulti­mate­ly com­pil­ing them in his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Inspired by the German word son­der (mean­ing spe­cial), and the French word son­der (mean­ing to probe), this word basi­cal­ly describes that feel­ing we get when we real­ize we aren’t the pro­tag­o­nist in any­one else’s sto­ry. We’re only extras, minor char­ac­ters that may or may not turn the plot or even get speak­ing parts. 

I can remem­ber the exact moment I first expe­ri­enced son­der. It was 1991. I was stargaz­ing in a field with my friend Wes, just high enough on crap­py weed that every­thing we said seemed infi­nite­ly wise. As a plane flew over­head, Wes asked where I thought the plane was head­ed (I mean, the obvi­ous answer is Atlanta, but this didn’t occur to me at the time). I decid­ed on Tampa, the Lightning Capital of the World. We start­ed imag­in­ing the peo­ple on that flight, how one was sur­pris­ing her ex to give their love anoth­er shot, how anoth­er was a Kinkos busi­ness­man whose pro­mo­tion depend­ed upon his get­ting some cor­po­ra­tion to exclu­sive­ly print with his com­pa­ny. Someone was heart­bro­ken, anoth­er new­ly mar­ried. Someone had a heart in a cool­er, ready to be trans­plant­ed into a wait­ing abdom­i­nal cav­i­ty in Florida. An old cou­ple held hands because she didn’t like to fly. Someone in first class had too much to drink and the flight atten­dants were secret­ly water­ing down his bour­bon rocks order so he didn’t get out of hand. 

Now I sus­pect that the sto­ries I devised were actu­al­ly less inter­est­ing than the peo­ples’ actu­al sto­ries. Sonder.

Everyone has their own dreams, expe­ri­ences, hopes, wish­es, and under­stand­ing of the world. Everyone around us is liv­ing a rich, deeply nuanced exis­tence, and this aware­ness can help us be kinder, more com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple. When we see oth­ers as only bit play­ers in our sto­ry, we strip them of their human­i­ty and overem­pha­size our own impor­tance. When we remem­ber that every­one has a sto­ry, we are apt to show up with more patience and understanding. 

Someone told me once that the secret to being a good per­son was treat­ing every­one as if they are griev­ing. When we know some­one is griev­ing a major loss, we are will­ing to extend to them all the com­pas­sion, kind­ness, and under­stand­ing we have and are inclined to offer them lat­i­tude for mak­ing what we (might oth­er­wise) assume are bad choices. 

This incli­na­tion is the flip side of feel­ing son­der. First, we become as curi­ous about the lives of oth­ers as our own, then we treat them with the gen­tle rev­er­ence they deserve.