Sonder

(n) the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles…

Sometimes when I allow myself to practice imagination, it is quite wild how far my mind wanders. My latest imagination sparked by a book was picturing being married to a king but only discovering at the altar when he shows up with a crown and everyone bows but I think I am in some kind of fiction, I pinch myself and it´s real so I try to bow last minute in this slightly exaggerated curtesy, he chuckles and says to me : you are my queen, the reason for the crown… aha I have been reading too many romance…

One of the reasons I travel a lot is not just for the experience of people and culture, it is the innate ability of a journey to drag you from routine, to force your mind to experience new things because you broaden your viewpoint… I remember one trip to a new city, as I wandered, I chanced upon a couple setting up dinner with a rose in the middle of the table in the kitchen, the windows open, they shared a kiss before they sat down to eat by the candle light. I felt like a voyeur to have witnessed such intimacy but that memory filled me with a sense of warm I haven´t been able to shake for a while now.

It is that memory amongst several others that prompted this post. I remember always thinking about how each and every one I come across have a back story, some setting they fit into that I could never be privy to. I imagine about the many mini worlds within the wide world, the stories shaped by geography, culture, and the experience of moments of pleasures and sorrows. I think about people that I only encounter subconsciously, the random man I thought to myself I like just because I gazed on him, the little boy I constantly waive at from my bathroom window each morning on his way to school, the woman I admired her dress on the street without much thought but filing the style to try later. I think about all the aunts and uncles that are a part of my life in some ways but absent in many others.

People who know me from the stories my parents tell, or my friends, the social media perception we all create these days. I have imagined family, about how one day my son will get to witness every part of me, especially when I seat by the vanity as I wear my makeup and he says “wow, mom you are beautiful.” What if it is my daughter?

That is sonder or how I want to expand on it. It is not just the idea that everyone around us is a part of a world we are excluded from, it is also the fact that sometimes the choices we make exclude from certain experiences that alienates us whether for good or bad.

I came across a post that read “Life doesn´t always have to be about this or that, it could be this and that.” This was quite interesting for me because I realized that I have been trying to fit into the contemplation of this or that for quite a while now for example, that I am either emotional or logical. Whereas, the true picture is that I am both emotional and rational. (I know men that will be offended by this statement but the opposite is also true for men).

So you can be competent and kind, rich and humble, knowledgeable and spiritual. I think we forget that we do not always have to be binary. That we have limitless capabilities in which we can choose to express ourselves.

I often also think of sonder as experiences we will never acquire personally but will be aware they exist and may get to experience through the stories of others. Whether in books, movies, or in person. It is not just the stories that unite us in humanity but the ones that also divides us that I refer to as sonder.

I think I can always expand on this list but this is my perspective for now. I am looking forward to your comments on Sonder.

See you next time!

Xoxo,

Dcconoissuer.