My friend Lynn loves language, as I do, and she often posts an interesting or unusual word on her Facebook feed. But because she knows that I visit Facebook about as often as I visit my furnace filter or smoke alarm batteries, she sent me her most recent wonder-inspiring word via text.
The word was “sonder.”
She did not include the definition — which was either a passive-aggressive prod to get me to join the rest of the Facebook folk, or a generous compliment implying that I must surely already know this word.
I embraced the latter interpretation as I looked it up.
Sonder means: “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” It is a term firmly rooted to compassion or empathy.
My immediate reaction to the word was to reflect on an intense sonder moment I had had about a year ago, when I went to a John Fogerty concert in Fort Lauderdale with Carol.
Carol was a warm, outgoing person who valued listening over speaking. She had the remarkable ability to get strangers to open up to her and to reveal the intricacies of their lives. She would go to the grocery store and come home with the names of the checkout person’s grandkids, their favorite classes in school, and what sports they played. One time we went out to breakfast and ate our omelets as the serving lady sat at our booth and told Carol the story of her life.
In short, Carol could have been the poster-child for sonder.
And as we sat in the concert hall waiting for the music to begin, gazing at the thousands of others in the crowd murmuring to each other, I turned to Carol and said, “You’re just dying to pop up next to each of them and say, ‘So tell me your story,’ aren’t you?”
She laughed and nodded. “You know me too well,” she said.
We sat in a room with thousands of humans patiently waiting together for the music to begin, and each of them had lived a lifetime to get them to this place, as we had. Like us, they all had a deep reason why a John Fogerty concert right now would be a high point in their life, and everybody in this place had their own path that had led them here. And Carol always wanted to know what that path was.
Until the music began, Carol and I pointed at person after person and invented their life story for ourselves.
And although I had never heard of the word “sonder” before, now that I had learned the word from our friend Lynn, I felt that my Fogerty experience with Carol was the perfect example of sonder. What could be a clearer grasp of the “vivid, complex” nature of a total stranger’s life than going to a concert to hear a famous musician and spending your time wondering about the lives of the thousands of common people sitting in seats all around you?
Sonder is, I suppose, a synonym for the word “humanity,” the notion that all of us on this planet are human beings, and as humans we share common traits regardless of race, region, or religion. To be aware of those common traits in total strangers, to recognize and honor them in others, is sonder.
The most profound writings of the human mind reflect sonder in one way or another. In the Bible it is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12)
In Islam’s Quran it is: “You should desire for others what you desire for yourself and hate for others what you hate for yourself.” (Ali ibn Abi Talib, 4th Caliph in Sunni Islam.)
For Buddhists it is: “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others.” (Udana-Varga 5.18)
For Confucians it is: “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”
As different as religions may be from each other, they all sprout from the same sonder seed, the same “golden rule” that honors and respects the lives of others. If there is any more obvious rule of life, I don’t know what it is other than the idea that all of the strangers we pass on the street are living, breathing, feeling, loving, hoping, grieving, and dreaming every bit as much as we are.
Even Winnie the Pooh’s grumpy donkey friend Eeyore says: “A little consideration, a little thought for others, makes all the difference.”
And yet, turn on the daily news and you’ll see countless examples of people who somehow haven’t gotten the word.
After all, how can a person walk into a Texas classroom full of innocent children and empty a magazine of bullets into nineteen of their bodies, unless their “sonder” button has gone haywire?
How can a person massacre eleven peaceful worshipers at a Pittsburgh Jewish synagogue without a “sonder” deficiency?
How can a pair of brothers ignite bombs at a crowded Boston marathon without somehow missing an essential “sonder” awareness?
The greatest writings of the human mind over the millennia have echoed the notion of sonder as the highest definition of what it means to be fully human.
And wouldn’t it be a small step in the right direction if all those sonder quotes were required to be displayed prominently on posters everywhere that guns are sold?
Even a grumpy ass like Eeyore wouldn’t object to that.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
