Sonder

We should all take a moment to stop and thank John Koenig for writing The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, for in this book rests the word ‘sonder’.

The noun ‘sonder’ is a realisation of the richness of other’s lives. Or as the book states: ‘the realisation 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’.

This meaning of sonder has yet to be accepted by the OED, which settles for the more mundane definition: ‘to probe’.

Even Koenig’s definition would benefit from being lifted out of its context of obscure sorrows. Why sorrow? Is there not something beautiful and unique in the realisation that every person is a mystery, full of mysteries, mysterious.

This means that every moment of connection with another carries with it a charge of wonder and beauty. How is that two complex individuals find a point of contact amidst all the inherited craziness?

We should embrace one another’s internal diversity as much as we honour external differences such as skin colour and religious dress.

I remember an anecdote I was once told about a man arriving at a train station at peak time. There were people everywhere but instead of becoming agitated and frustrated, the man took a breath and saw not an overcrowded train station but a ballroom where everyone was not jostling for a train but instead moving to a private dance that continued invisibly around him. Each life as rich and varied as his own, he watched on in wonder.

This is why sonder is not a sorrow. If you have ever been to a rug shop in Asia, it is clear that you do not need an intimate understanding of rugmaking to see the beauty and splendour of the rugs before you. The same is true of the fresco in the Sistine Chapel. And the same is true of humans.

I may not know the story of their life (how they were made), but I can see that they are complex and full of wonder and beauty. I may never know them enough of course to experience this directly, but I can by subjectively acknowledging the mystery of my own being, know that this must also exist beyond me also.

When we realise this, we then realise that every moment of life is filled with wonder. Sonder allows us to see. And what is better than that? I thank you, John Koenig.