SONDER

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.

There are times I'll pass people on the street or in a train station and they kind of stand out somehow and I get this weird urge to talk to them and get to know them. Instead I'll carry on and never see them again or know anything about their life. I can't explain but it makes me sad

Sitting on a bench in a park or in a public transport, putting my life and all my problems aside for a while, and just observing people around me. Strangers that I've never met. Thinking about them. What are their names? What are they going through? What is that one's biggest fear? What is this one's greatest achievement? What are their priorities, their values? What are their stories?