Many friends have told me about John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, but it wasn’t until recently that someone gave me a copy of the book. You can get a flavor of the book watching this short video.
This week, I’m going to dedicate my five blog posts to some words that I think deserve to be in the popular lexicon. In a recent blog post, I mused on the fact that I Like Words. And, in this week’s series, I’ll tell you why these particular words are meaningful to me…and, probably, you if you’re in the MEA community. I’ve included a video for each of the words as well as the dictionary definition in italics.
SONDER: the awareness that everyone has a story
You are the main character. The protagonist. The star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.
But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.
When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you’ll never be able to see. That you’ll never know exists. 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.
French sonder, to plumb the depths. Pronounced “sahn-der.” Can be used as a noun or a verb, as you would use the word wonder.
Our MEA facilitator DL introduced this word to me as a way to collectively ritualize the end of a mindfulness session. It’s a way of saying I see and feel you for all you’re going through, the weight AND the wonder of the world. This definition captures the profound awareness that everyone we encounter has a rich, complex life of their own, often hidden from our view. It’s a reminder of the vast tapestry of human experience unfolding around us, each thread contributing to the intricate whole.
It’s part of the magic we experience in an MEA workshop when each person’s story and essence begins to unfold over the course of a week.
-Chip