Sondering Around

Sonder - n. the realization 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 like an anthill sprawling deep underground, 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.

Some people take it as a cynical “we are all just ants who don’t affect anything”, but I don’t see it that way. Instead, I find it beautiful how it encompasses the complexity and seemingly infinite nature of life; all within a tiny five-letter word. We all have a unique story to tell.

(And, who doesn’t love people-watching in the city on a busy Saturday morning?)