Sonder is a word you never knew you knew, until you know it.
As I write this note, I’m going through a...moment, as it were. I have recently realized that for all my depth, all my memories, and all the ways I do and do not like my eggs cooked, there are 7,800,000,000 more of me.
It’s a concept that floats in and out of my mind when I see apartment buildings where people live stacked on top of one another—so many layers of life, like a birthday cake of experiences. But this piece of information has hit a new sweet spot.
As I feel the weight of my own nonsense, I’m realizing that the world is abuzz with all the life we’ve lived in it. Yesterday I looked at the storefronts I walked by on Beverly Boulevard and thought of every first kiss at each restaurant. I imagined each tearful gaze out a car window that fixed itself on the colorful buildings, bleary with world-ending sadness. I heard the long-gone footsteps that crossed the same cement sidewalk as if they were my own memory.
Today I looked around my kitchen and it came boiling up again—whose hands polished the granite I’ve always taken for granted? I planted my hand on the cheap cooking wine I’ve been drinking, despite wine not being my drink—and I imagined I could feel the vintners, the labelers, the corkers. I could see a distant vineyard, bathing its rolling hills under the sun like a beachgoer.
I inhabited the dress I’m wearing with renewed reverence. A secondhand find; who wore it before I wore it on the top of a mountain in St. Thomas? Whose hands fastened the buttons to it before then?
I can never be lonely again.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, hold it gently, touch the table under your other palm, and call upon the people who will never know how much they support you.