Sonder

Today I discovered an interesting new website. New websites remind me of the awesome power of humanity when we set our minds to achieving something, and how collectively we have created the ‘Internet’ (capitalized out of respect), a tool that has changed humanity.

The website I discovered is called ‘The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’ (thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com). The “dictionary” itself is a collection of words that are completely made up. In the websites information page, it says: ‘All content is original [i.e. made up], is published for it’s own sake (sorry, no ads) and is intended to be read at night.’ I love websites that are intended to be viewed at night, because they are invariably the most weird and wonderful kinds of websites. It’s like that deep, dark part of YouTube that you never voluntarily go to, but you somehow end up there via a path of (seemingly unrelated) “related” videos.

One word that has been created on the website is:

Sonder

To realize 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.

What an exceptional word, and poetic definition! I implore you all to start using this word in everyday speech.

“Ah, my life seems so complicated right now!”

“Ah yes, but sonder my dear friend, we are all in the same boat.”

“Sometimes I get so angry with her, but then I just sonder for a while, and I remember that we are all in this together.”

Wouldn’t that be nice if we all remembered to sonder?

As I type right now, the word ‘sonder’ is repeatedly underlined with a red squiggle. Goddamit Microsoft Word! I hope that one day, words like these become so frequently used that they permeate through dictionaries, and eventually enter the realm of ‘words that Microsoft Word accepts’ (HELLO ‘bling bling’, which was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2003).

That’s a funny thing about language, if we all decide to use a technically non-existent word, and it becomes so frequently used, then eventually, it becomes a word. It’s like trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, but as we all know, it’s not going to happen.

The same goes for using a word incorrectly. For example, the word ‘access’ used to be a noun, not a verb. One would have to say ‘ I want to gain access to something’ rather than ‘I want to access something’. Now, however, it has transcended into the verb club.

Personally, I despise the use of adjectives as adverbs, and I can only hope that they NEVER transcend into the verb club. Examples are everywhere: ‘eat healthy’ (I think you mean eat healthily or eat healthy food thanyouverymuch!) or Nando’s’ despicable catch line ‘eat interesting’. Perhaps most embarrassingly, Melbourne University recently assumed the tag line ‘Dream Large’. Oh dear, Melbourne University, I can only hope you don’t intend for your students to ‘dream large’ when it comes to their grammar skills.

Anyway, I digress! I’d hate for this blog to become a place for grammar Nazism to fester in it’s own big-headedness.

What I really want to say is, we should all remember to sonder. Sometimes it is very easy to be caught up in the complexities of our own lives.

I’ve always had a weird fascination with people I see on the street. If I’m sitting somewhere in public, it’s hard not to watch others and think: “I wonder where he is going. I wonder what his name is, where he is from, what he’s thinking. What’s his story?” Each of us has our ups and downs, each of us have our own hopes and concerns.

For me, my first ‘sonder’ moment was when I was about 7. It was my birthday. I arrived at school and nobody had remembered. I ran around asking my friends ‘don’t you KNOW what day this is?!’ Like, JEEZ, this is basically as important as Christmas, guys.

Slowly I realised that although to me this was an extremely important day, to everyone else this was just any other day. Suddenly it hit me like a wall of bricks; it’s someone’s birthday on any given day of the year, and for everyone else it’s just a regular day. The world does not revolve around me. Sonder, dude, sonder.

The book ‘1984’ by George Orwell touches on the concept of the power of words. I believe it to be true that if we don’t have a word for something, it’s hard to fathom that concept. For example, if there were no words for ‘freedom’ or ‘frustration’, it would be hard (to an extent) to imagine those concepts. That is, however, a conversation for another day.

My point (at long last!) is that we should always sonder while we are dealing with others, including animals. If we can bring this word into the public domain, then perhaps more sondering will happen. If more sondering happens, there will be more compassion. And with compassion, we can make the world a better place.

“Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.” -Einstein

the reckless philosopher