Sonder
— (n.) The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
Throughout your journey in life, you might have realized this at some point, that nobody actually gives a shit about you.
You have just cut your hair, you look in the mirror and gasp to yourself, “That hairdresser did a terrible job!” You find a thousand reasons how this haircut has just gone terribly wrong, and you dread going about your day in this awful clump of threads on your head you call hair. But then as you end your day nobody commented and paid attention to your head, then you realize —
Nobody even knew you cut your hair.
This egocentrism inflated your perception of who you are and placed you on a pedestal, when in actual fact you are nothing but part of a faceless crowd that roam the streets.
You are the protagonist of your own story, what you view from your eyes is the most vivid FPS game in the world. Every other people you meet are NPCs whom you talk to, providing you with services and being there for the sake of being there. That cashier behind the Starbucks counter getting your frappuccino; that person reading the newspaper sitting behind you, sipping from a cup. They are the uncasted extras of the epic story that is your life.Your mind is proliferated by decisions you have to make, tasks you have to do, how co-workers will think of your haircut.
But to them, you are just another person buying a cup of coffee, an extra in their own inevitable self-absorbed story. The cashier behind the counter, she dreams of becoming a singer, taking up any job she can get to scrape by before the next round of audition comes by. The man sitting at the back of the cafe, skimming through the papers everyday, looking for any news of Afghanistan, where his son is fighting in, longing for a day when he can return home.
Everyone has their own dreams, their own worries. In the grand scheme of things, your life is just another, no one really cares. As unique as a snowflake you are, you are just part of the snowfall in winter — ultimately indistinguishable from the billions of the other snowflakes.
But that’s okay.
It also makes all your problems seem smaller that they truly are. There are so many opportunities your are missing just because of your fear of what people think. And frankly, it doesn’t matter.
Because no one gives a shit.
This word, sonder, is coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, in its mission to fill up lexical gaps in human language. Feelings, emotions and the innate human need to have complex and relatable realizations encapsulated into single words. Do support him and his work!
This article is originally published on Medium, 27 Septmeber 2015.
If you liked it, consider sharing and subscribing.