Sonder
Every time I am in a new place, be it large or small, I find myself thinking about a word I came across years ago on the internet: sonder.
Sonder was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and it captures something I had felt years before finding the word. It is the “realization that everyone has a story,” that each person you see is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. This realization doesn’t often come easily or early. Self-awareness grows with age - we move from the natural self-centeredness of youth to a broader recognition of others’ full humanity.
I sit in a park, sun warming my face and pigeons gathering at my feet, just like the man on the bench beside me. At first I thought he was blind. His sunglasses seemed medical, and he carried what I thought was a cane. He scattered breadcrumbs with such careful attention that I wondered how he knew exactly where the birds had landed. Then he rose, grabbed his umbrella – not a cane at all – and walked to the tram. His story was completely different than the one I imagined.
This is what sonder teaches us: everyone carries on “invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.” Most everyone is living a life beautifully unconcerned with our own.
To my right, a demonstration unfolds. Kurdish flags flutter in the breeze, banners calling attention to political prisoners, injustices I knew nothing about five minutes ago. Each protester carries their own reasons for being here, their own hopes for change.
A toddler suddenly runs in front of me, chasing pigeons with delight while her mother approaches me with a religious pamphlet in Swedish. I decline. I wonder about her faith, what brings her comfort, and what she hopes to share with strangers like me.
A dog leaps joyfully into the river while her owner waits on the bank, wearing a sweatshirt with words that hint at his own political leanings. A man in a wheelchair takes a long drag off a cigarette, savoring the moment of sun and solitude. A teenager with pink hair laughs with friends, and I find myself hoping she will carry that spark of individuality forward, not abandon it for conformity.
A woman in a hijab sits with her walker in front of her, loaded down with shopping bags. She shares her muffin wrapper with the pigeons who have abandoned my feet and rushed to her, along with a lone, opportunistic seagull. Perhaps she does this every day, a small ritual of care that makes this corner of the world a little kinder.
A man shares his arm with someone with a disability, both of them captivated by the store window displays as they stroll the cobblestones together. Love in action, patience made visible, one person becoming part of another’s story in the most fundamental way.
People flow on and off the tram, gazing through windows or absorbed in their phones. Each carries their own weather, their own storms and sunshine, their own reasons for traveling from here to there.
We should live understanding “sonder.” That everyone is living a full, complex, challenging, loving life, where the sun sometimes breaks through to warm our souls. We should bring this knowledge to every interaction, knowing that our brief encounters might be the bright spot in someone’s difficult day or a small kindness that restores their faith.
We should also remember that we are indeed small, that we will never know everyone or be known by everyone. But in that smallness lies our power: we can change what is immediately around us, and support and love those within our reach with our whole hearts. Some people are called to reach farther, gifted with platforms or voices that can touch hearts across great distances. I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s words about our pale blue dot, which capture both our cosmic insignificance and our profound responsibility to each other:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Every person I watched in this park today - the man with the umbrella, the woman sharing her muffin wrapper, the friends strolling arm in arm - all of us living out our brief stories on this mote of dust. All of us capable of choosing kindness. And the evidence of that kindness is all around us.
Because there are dogs. And people feeding pigeons. Teenagers walking arm in arm down cobblestone streets. Babies gazing wide-eyed from strollers. Police on scooters. Everyone moving through their days, most of them trying not to hurt each other, many of them actively choosing care.
And there are also demonstrations that bring distant suffering into sharp focus. We can hold both the weight of injustice and the lightness of everyday grace, that life contains profound suffering we must not ignore, and that everyone still deserves the simple dignity of sun on their faces.
Sitting here, warmed by the light that has traveled so far to reach us all, I think of those who hold a tender place in my heart. Distance makes the heart ache, heightening our awareness of every thread that binds us together. One day we will be gone, and people will still feed pigeons in parks, still share their arms on cobblestone walks, still chase birds with laughter.
These soft moments exist for us all. They make us human. Make sure the people who live in your heart know it – every time you see them, every time you speak. Love is the story we write together, the warmth we choose to share, the way we become part of each other’s sonder. And we can choose to be the light that warms a stranger’s face, the brief kindness that becomes part of their story, the unexpected grace that makes their life a little brighter.
