The Art of Sonder

SONDER

/ˈsɑːn.dɚ/


noun

        the awareness that other people all have their own complex set of feelings and experiences



Driving home from the golf range one evening, I found myself thinking about a tiktok I had seen a couple days earlier. The video introduced me to the concept of sonder – the idea that every person I pass is living a life just as vivid and complex as my own. I'm not sure if it was because the sky was pretty and I was feeling philosophical as heck, but the video resonated with me so much. The thought that a random pedestrian could be having the best day of their life, while another passing by could have just lost a loved one is so mind-boggling to me. 

To them, their life and the way they percieve it is the only thing they know; to me, they are nothing more than a face I'll never see again. Every person carries a story, a story so intricate and unique that I'll never be able to understand it, let alone even acknowledge it. 

It was this realization that forced me to finally understand how infinitesimally small I am in contrast to the other 8 billion people on earth. My problems practically define my current emotional state and well being, but I couldn't give a tiny little fece about the problems that some random stranger in Canada is facing. Compared to the thousands, maybe even millions, of hardships that everyone has gone through in their life, mine are insignificant. I just lost a 20 dollar bill? So what? Another person probably just lost their entire life savings to a scammer or something to the likes of that. 

But back to my aesthetic drive home, I realized that sonder can be percieved in two ways: 1. you could drown in the growing anxiety that you mean nothing to the world, or 2. you could stop drowning and try to live your best life by doing something about your "infinitesimally small" problems. 



Me personally, I'm just trying to make it to tomorrow (school is making this really difficult because i'm always fried by millions of assignments and tests), but in the grand scheme of things, maybe everyone else is also trying to do the same. I guess I'll never truly know. 
That's the art of Sonder.


If any of the 4.13 billion girls in the world are single and looking for a hot asian boyfriend please hit me up🤤

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