When I was 21, I spent a year backpacking around China. It was more than thirty-five years ago, and I don’t remember everything, but there was a moment among the many that I often think about. I was on a long train ride – and when I say long I mean 36 hours; trains were slower then. It was a hot afternoon, with the sun low and a warm glow in the air. The train had stopped for no obvious reason; and I was looking out of the window at a man, probably about 40 years old, working in the rice-fields through which the train passed. He was, I guess, only about 20 yards away, and I could see him very well – he was wearing long blue trousers, and a red t-shirt. I don’t remember exactly what he was doing, but I watched him for, I guess, 15 minutes. He was not aware of me. Then the train jolted into motion, and he looked up, and our eyes met. As the train moved away he did not wave, but we both nodded to each other, and held each other’s gaze for some 30 seconds until the track curved away. The train pulled on. I have never seen this man again, and never will – if I did I would not know him, even if he is still alive. He would certainly not recognise me.
But I have often wondered about him: Did he have a family? Was he happy? What were his hopes and dreams? Did he achieve them? What was his home like? Did he work for himself or someone else? Did he enjoy his work? Did he read? Had we ever read the same books? Would we enjoy each other’s company? Would we make each other laugh if we ever met? Was he satisfied with a life well lived?
And I realised, as I have thought about this over the years, that these questions are questions we most often ask only about ourselves, or family or close friends. We do not ask them, or even consider them, about most people. The questions still matter, but we rarely get to them because they do not fit our natural narrative; that we are the main character, the star at the centre of our own unfolding story. We’re surrounded by our supporting cast. Friends and family orbit around us like planets. A network of acquaintances are like comets, drifting in and out of contact over the years. And then there is a dust cloud of extras, barely visible. The random passersby. The man I saw all those years ago.
This is a natural narrative, and hard to even identify, so I was grateful when I came across a word that challenges this vision and for me, crystallises why I have thought about this man for so many years:
Sonder: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
Sonder observes that everyone has the same narrative we have; we are all the protagonists of our own shows. And we can use it to derive the obvious and humbling conclusion; namely, that each life is as vivid and complex as our own. The passers-by are not just passers-by, but people like us who, as the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows puts it, are bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness. When our lives move on to the next scene, theirs flicker in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories that we’ll never be able to see. That we’ll never know exists. In which we might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway.
I guess for that man, in the extremely unlikely event he remembers me at all, it would be as a tourist he saw for a few seconds, decades ago. For him, I am an extra.
We tend to forget this. We forget that each person we ever come across is living a life like our own. We tend to think that people around us somehow owe us, or that their purpose is to somehow make our lives easier. Of course parents and to some extent schools do play that role – but as we grow up, less and less so. Words like sonder give us the chance to recall that everyone’s going through the same thing as we are; we are all living our lives, trying to do the best we can – we are all alike in this. All individuals live lives that are equally valuable, with equally valuable concerns, cares, loves, worries, hopes and dreams.
We need to remember that. And when we most need to remember it is precisely when it is hardest to do so, when we are most caught up in our own parochial concerns. It is at the root of rational compassion, and the route to humility, gratitude and, perhaps eventually, justice.
Further Readings
- Sanghvi, M.(2019) Noticing Strangers. Just Looking
- n.a. (n.d) Sonder: The Realization That Everyone Has A Story. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrow
