Do you ever feel like you’re the main character? Feeling like nobody around you has a life story that matters, feeling like god handpicked you to live out the next story. News Flash you’re not. every human has their own life story, feelings, and fingerprints and has an indent on this world. The uncovering of this feeling is called sonder. Definition 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.
Everyone in this society has a Truman Show-esque viewpoint on life, not understanding what goes on in other people’s lives. This has gone along with a loss of empathy and not understanding people’s feelings or lives. The emotion of sonder is about not just pondering the ideas of people’s lives but the understanding of what people go through. You don’t have to live someone else’s life to understand that they have feelings and emotions as well.
Humans are complex yet simple creatures having stories lives and feelings, But at the same time, they are simple creatures who laugh cry, and feel. The feeling of sonder shakes that blanket of naiveness that some people are once covered by. We as humans can be interconnected through lives weaving passages or we can be parallel lines on a graph never touching. When you realize that every face you see is a window into a world as full of joys and sorrows as your own, it changes how you interact with others. You begin to see the hidden grace in every glance, the silent struggles behind every smile. Recognizing the universality of human experience makes you more attuned to the emotions and lives of those around you.
It fosters a sense of empathy that enriches your relationships and your view of the world. So every once in a while you can have your own Rory Gilmore moment and you can focus on yourself, But remember to step outside of yourself now and then. Look around, and realize that every person you pass has a life full of love, pain, hope, and dreams, just like you. We may not share the same race, face, or fate, but we are all part of the same story—the story of the human race.
