Sonder and the Surrealism of Life
RANDOM PASSERBYS
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
sonder
n. the realization 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.
The following is a piece that was inspired by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows 1 and captured in the rawness of pain during the Urgent Care visit several months ago when I was flung outside and landed on the cement, at my workplace. You can read about that experience in its entirety called Angels Among Us.
Waiting in line at Urgent Care, I hear a voice from a woman standing behind me, "you're feathered". I turn to look at her and she is looking down but in my direction. I look down to where her eyes are fixed and there is a giant bird feather on my shoe. Woman is now looking toward the outside door. In a very calm tone, like I’m her coffee date, she tells me, "I'm waiting for Paul. We’ve had a cold for 2 weeks and he's dying." I give her a concerned, empathetic, stranger look. She has no idea I have just flown 6 feet through the air and landed on the concrete and am wondering if I am standing here with a broken hip. Then she quickly adds, " or so he thinks. He has the beginning of Alzheimer’s." I nod.
Paul arrives. She calls to him once, twice-louder, a third time-she shouts. My name is called from a smiling woman from a door and I drop out of line.
We disappear into the doctor zones and we all seem to reappear 45 minutes later into the large waiting room. I am now sitting in a chair waiting to get called again to receive the summary of my physical injuries and my invoice.
She is smiling as they walk across the room towards the outside door. Yes, she is smiling walking 5 feet ahead of him. Paul, with a black mask and a white shock of hair piled on top of his head, eyes squinting. Yes, he definitely looks distressed as he clutches a small bottle of medicine to his chest.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig, “poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express—until now.”
I’ll leave the light on,
Thank you for the introduction to "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" - I love it! I do occasionally sonder and I'm so happy there is a word for it. Now and again I have wondered what opening a window into the life of a fellow traveler in life would reveal. Multiple windows opened for you in urgent care - simple encounters, beautifully told. (I hope Paul is OK...!!)
It’s funny. I was just thinking yesterday about capturing random snippets of life in an effort to show that concept described in the opening passage of this post. We so easily become mired in our own story that we completely miss everyone else’s. But then we cross paths and, for a moment, are connected. It’s fascinating.