My Two Favorite Definitions (Weirdly enough this word is not in most dictionaries):
- Sonder (Godin, Seth This is Marketing (pg. 42). 2018.): The moment when you realize that everyone around has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours
- Sonder (from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows). “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.”
A beautiful word that I think fits perfectly with the idea, and effort, to reduce the tendency to compare ourselves to others. And to also find peace in what other people do and how they behave and act. We all have and live completely unique and separate lives. We’re all playing the leading role in our own movie.
We’ve all gone through our own shit. The extreme highs and extreme lows. The shit that’s made us who we are, and brought us to where we are now. No one else has lived that life but you. Take pride in that, in what you do, where you are, who you are. Don’t try and compare yourself to anyone else, because they live and have their own life. They’ve had their own circumstances that brought them to where they are, and makes them act the way they do.
Live your own vivid, rich, and complex life. And love it for what it is. And let others do that same.
I also find this word pairs beautifully with the idea of the “Smallest Viable Market”.
(P.S. Pardon the curse words)
From “Creative Quick Takes” 2019