207. Sondering

Nora shares her brush with a word that is apparently all the rage right now. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC

When I read, I keep track of words I’m unfamiliar with. I’ll highlight them and look them up later and write the definition in the back of a notebook that I never look at again, like a good little student hoping for an A from her imaginary teacher.

When I scroll the internet and see a new word, or a familiar word in an unfamiliar context, or an acronym, I’ll immediately look it up.

And there’s a hot new word – or at least a new to ME word – that I’m seeing everywhere now. 

It’s the new name of an old hotel in my city.

It’s the name of my friend’s newish company.

It’s on urban dictionary dot com and it’s NOT inappropriate.

The word. Is sonder.

Dictionary dot com defines this word as, and I quote, “the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and as real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.”

I love words for feelings, especially for specific feelings. And I love this specific word for this specific feeling because I think that sondering is humanity at its best. At our highest and best selves – not a self that is possible to maintain at every moment of the day unless you are freakishly enlightened and therefore probably not a person that I know – we realize the depths of each other’s humanity. That the many people who refuse to return their shopping carts to the cart corral at the St. Louis Park, Minnesota CostCo, whose parking lot is way too small to just have random shopping cars sitting around, are people with their own lives, their own worries, their own reasons for not returning the giant shopping cart they had the strength to push and unload just a few yards away, where it belongs. Where it BELONGS.

That every day, we are bit characters, NPCS in the background of someone else’s hero’s journey or side quest. 

That life is the ultimate Must See TV Cross-Over episode, millions, billions of main characters in their own shows stopping by each other’s sets to deliver a couple lines and boost ratings.

It’s easy for me personally.

OUTRO MUSIC

CREDITS