Do you know what “sonder” means? Don’t worry if you don’t; it’s a word that’s not even in the dictionary. It was first coined in 2012 by author John Koenig, whose project The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words. Sonder is defined in Koenig’s book as, “the realization that each random passerby is living a life just as vivid and complex as your own - populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, losses, worries and craziness.”
I’m grateful for this term, because sonder is a feeling I know but have never been able to name, until now. It’s especially reminiscent of looking out over the city from the top of a Toronto skyscraper, seeing cars below me like ants on a sidewalk, people walking around the size of pinpricks. Looking down on so much life makes you think about the names and experiences behind all those faces. As human beings, we all go through many challenges. But do we ever extend this knowledge outwards, thinking that because we experience so much, so does everyone else? It’s a hard concept to grasp. To consider the fact that all we are and everything we think is reconfigured in every single little pinprick of a person, only differentiated by their experiences and past, is overwhelming. It’s a realization that - no matter how much you think about it - is not possible to fully comprehend. This is no fault of our own; it just means that we cannot fully understand the value and depth of others’ lives unless we experience every detail ourselves, and this is impossible.
This brings me to a story that is popular at this time of year: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. This famous Christmas story is of Scrooge, a cold and unsympathetic man who is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. These spirits take him through his own timeline to remind him that what you do can have a colossal impact on the lives of others. This realization drives Scrooge to understand the meaning behind others’ lives, and that people can be going through incredibly difficult situations without ever making it apparent. He thus becomes a better person, with stronger senses of generosity and kindness. This story relates to the term ‘sonder’ because it teaches that other people’s lives are much more complex and difficult than we know, just as the definition of the word states. By learning this, Scrooge is able to change for the better and help people rather than hinder them. But why is this important for us to realize?
Every single day, we impact the lives of others whether we realize it or not. Impacting someone else’s life can be as simple as giving a homeless person a dollar, smiling at someone on the street, or telling a loved one you care about them. It can also include being rude to a bus driver because you’re having a bad day, cutting in front of someone in a line, or honking your horn at another car when driving. Good or bad, all these things end up making a difference in someone else’s life, no matter how small this difference may be. This is the astute declaration that sonder brings with it, despite being a term for a quiet kind of sorrow; it also demands that upon realizing that everyone is living a life as motley as your own, you must do what you can to ensure you don’t make someone’s life more difficult.
This is why the term sonder is especially important today, in this fascinating and unparalleled year. We all know that 2020 has brought challenges that no one could have foreseen, and we’re all struggling with the continuation of COVID-19. Yet we must remember that despite what we are personally dealing with because of COVID-19, we are not alone in our difficulties. There are people we may meet once, or never at all, who are in equally or even more difficult situations than ourselves. We must carry this realization with us throughout our lives, because it teaches us true empathy and understanding. It can drive us to be more compassionate and more aware of what we do each day, even in the smallest of ways. To understand sonder is also to change your perspective, and reconsider your life in terms of the fact that you are not alone in what you deal with, and you never have been.
To leave you with imagery that truly captures the sorrow of the term, imagine being on a city street at night, looking up at a tall building. It’s a snowy evening, with people bundled up in coats and scarves, streetlights brightened and buses passing loudly; above you, rising high into the cold air, an apartment building spotted with brightly lit windows. It is in imagining this situation that you must think of all the lives bustling around you. The people passing on the street are going somewhere, and they too are thinking of how cold they are, but also about whatever’s troubling them, which could be anything from math homework to a dying family member in the hospital. You will never know, but you must realize that this is something you cannot see. The people on the bus are heading somewhere; maybe home from work after a long day, maybe to see someone that they miss, maybe to go visit friends; the bus driver, too, is perhaps sick and tired of carting people around all day. Above you, in the lit apartment windows, people are warming up after a long day outside, sitting on furniture they may have laboured over putting together, or spent time saving up to buy. Maybe they are experiencing a pivotal moment in their lives; having a monumental fight, or celebrating a birthday with loved ones. The fact is, you will simply never know. To them, you are a passerby too; a pinprick on the street when looking out a window, a blur as the bus passes and turns a corner, or a bundled-up somebody on the street that they overlook and never see again.
To understand sonder is to feel overwhelmed by this realization, to know that you can do nothing to slow the flow of complicated existence taking place all around you. You are but one single person in a world of billions. Sonder is a sorrow because it is almost painful to know that there is so much life and joy yet so much loss and pain in the world, all of which you will never be aware of.
To conclude, I want to leave you with the full definition of sonder; I only provided part of it in the beginning of this article to explain the term’s intensity without simply stating so. As the original definition from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows eloquently describes, “Sonder is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, losses, worries and craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you, 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.”
Image Source: “Minneapolis, United States” by Josh Hild from pexels.com