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.
I was on a bus ride home the first time I read this definition. I looked up from my phone to see all the people around me, noses buried in phones, books and bus windows. Every person, a book being written. I wish I could bury my nose in every single one. I was struck by sonder. An experience that may deeply frighten some, and provide reassurance to others.
If, at this moment, you found yourself deeply frightened, you could step off the bus and walk straight to the nearest parking garage. Climbing several flights of stairs, you would arrive at the top. You lean over the edge for a better view of the sidewalk below. On the grid of concrete, you see the top of a man’s head.
Several flights of stairs beneath you, he’s a distant planet, an enticing target. One option here would be to hawk a loogie onto his big stupid head. Let’s say you chose this option. Wiping syrupy spittle from his skull, he looks up to see your face grinning back at him—orbiting, weightless, untouchable. A tiny absurdity, dropped from above. You have now entered his story.
Your spit was a small input into a complex system. The field of complexity theory is the science of interconnected systems. Ant colonies, traffic patterns, economies, flocks of birds, humans on a bus. In these systems, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. Patterns emerge. Behavior evolves. Small actions ripple outward, shifting the system in ways no one can fully predict. The ripple of your spit upon his head may have interrupted his internal monologue. Maybe he was rehearsing an apology, maybe he was counting how many days had passed since he last cried.
And then—splat. A hard reset, a system reboot. A trajectory nudged. The rest of his day, week, month or life now unfolds differently.
You, the orbiting agent of chaos, could rush down those stairs to shake this mans hand.
Confused, he wonders what your fucking deal is. You wonder what the fuck his deal is, knowing full well that you may never know the extent of what the fuck his deal is. And yet, through your reckless and beautiful choice, you are now connected. A newfound perspective that we are a complex system of simple circles, each with the power to draw lines to other circles. Once the line is drawn, it can never be fully erased. It may stretch, fade, tighten, fray—but it remains.
People come together, people grow apart.
In the case of this man, you will likely drift apart.
Ships in the night.
You’ve drifted apart from many—some who have sculpted you into the person you are today.
You step onto another stranger-filled bus home.
Watching the landscape move past and mentally tracing the tangled network of mile-long lines connecting you to all those people from your past.
Dots and dashes, circles and lines, ropes and boats.
You look up at the people you’re being transported with. You are one node among many, reabsorbed into the system. Maybe no one sees you, maybe no one speaks. But every, breath, hum, shuffle and glance is a quiet recalibration.
The system evolves.
Sitting in that bus seat, you reach out your hands and one by one, firmly grasp each persons rope and begin reeling them in. Maybe just a little. Maybe just enough.