365 Project # 224 Sonder

Every day I sonder. Here's the definition of this new, made-up word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, I'll bet you'll like it. Click the photo for a cool video. Feeling small and insignificant and large and important all at the same time fills me with quiet joy. It also helps me to treat people better, as I understand they have their own lives, concerns and experiences to handle.

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.

Photo courtesy of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows