It’s a startling concept, when you really think about it.
Imagine a street café.
A man sits alone, scanning a newspaper. At the counter, a young woman pauses, lost in thought. Near the exit, an elderly man with a cane limps toward the door, as you sit quietly, sipping coffee.
And just like that, we brush up against the hauntingly beautiful concept of sonder, a word coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
The man scanning the paper is searching for a part-time job. It’s all he can manage since being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. The woman at the counter is wondering how she’s going to survive the two weeks she’s agreed to spend looking after her sister’s hyperactive German Shepherd. And the elderly man with the cane? He’s a retired neurosurgeon who still consults weekly and refuses to fade into obscurity.
Sonder is the sudden realization that every random passerby is living a life as vivid, layered, and intricate as your own, complete with their own struggles, routines, heartbreaks, victories, and secret moments of joy. And you may never know a single thing about them.
It’s a kind of emotional vertigo. Like looking up at the stars and realizing that each one is a sun, surrounded by its own orbiting worlds. But in this case, it’s not stars, it’s people. Real, beating-heart humans with rich inner landscapes you’ll never explore.
Sonder can be unsettling when it hits you full on. It’s a soft sort of awe. But it’s also an antidote to the narcissism of modern life. In an age of relentless personalization and curated social bubbles, this concept hits like a wake-up call. It reminds us that we are not the center of the universe. Other people’s stories matter, even if they remain untold.
When you sit with it long enough, it can be overwhelming. We simply can’t carry every story. So, we reduce people to roles: the barista, the Uber driver, that slovenly guy at the grocery store. It’s easier that way. But every time we collapse a person into a category, we discard the richness of their actual experience. And that’s the beginning of disconnection.
I’m writing this email from the shore of Bob Lake. I can see other cottages dotting the far side of the water. Some are empty, some filled with weekend guests. Each one holds stories. Arguments. First kisses. Quiet sadness. Board games. Laughter. Generational traditions. A million small details from lives that are just as valid as mine.
If someone in one of those cottages glances across the lake and could see me sitting here, typing away on my iPad, I’m irrelevant. I’m just an extra in the background of their story, if I register for them at all.
And they are extras in mine.
I was reminded of all this a few nights ago, watching the Blue Jays play at Rogers Centre. I looked around and felt it again, that quiet jolt of sonder. Every one of the 40,000 people in the stands was the lead character in their own unfolding story. Hopes. Regrets. Diagnoses. Promotions. Breakups. Discoveries. Plans for later. Secret dreams. The momentum of it all, it’s breathtaking when you let yourself really see it.
Once this realization lands, it can soften us. It helps us become more sympathetic, more patient, maybe even more empathetic. We begin to understand that the story we’re writing isn’t the story, it’s just one of countless others, all interwoven, all unfolding side by side.
We don’t know what others have survived. We don’t know what they’re carrying today, or what they’re about to face tomorrow. But we can choose to honor the fact that they are carrying something.
And if I can remember that, if I can hold space for the validity of the lives of my extras and bit players, it just might shift how I move through the world. It might help me be a little more generous, a little more compassionate, a little more forgiving, when our lives inevitably intersect.
And maybe, that’s enough.
- Mike Mandel
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