Sonder

29 Sep 2025

Recently I've discovered a new word for me - "Sonder".

According to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

Sonder is 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.

So, the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own...

Honestly speaking, I have always had a feeling that everybody is some kind of a NPC... For me it is really difficult to imagine that the some person's life is complex as mine. It is so strange.

I asked some random friends about that and everybody agreed that they do have some feeling like "sonder". So I don't know, if I'm normal at all...