I think that the most interesting word in the world is sonder. 

Sonder is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. 

During my childhood, I recall sitting in the back seat of the car, looking into others’ cars, wondering where they were going, where they’d come from, or how their days had been. I’d watch as we traveled down the same road, only to separate when they took a left, and my mom took a right. 

They lived their lives, and we lived ours—a similar reality, yet separate. This was easy to understand for younger me because, although we shared the same road, there was an inherent distinction: I was in my car; they were in theirs. 

Life, to me, had always seemed singular and linear. There was only one truth, one way things happened, and as long as I was capable, I believed I’d remember it that way. 

Then came the discovery of multiple points of view, perceptions, and emotions, and, of course, things became a bit more complicated. My intrigue about others evolved from simple observation to a form of education. I wanted to understand why and how different narratives could occur.

But a hard reality I learned to grapple with was that you truly never know anyone. There’s a quiet violence in realizing you’ll never know most people deeply. You’ll never see the little rituals that hold them together. Never hear the things they say out loud when they’re alone in the car. Never know whether they sleep with one leg out of the blanket, or who first taught them how to be kind. 

It’s kind of tragic. All these full, complex lives crashing into each other for a moment. On sidewalks, in elevators, and at gas stations. And then disappearing, entirely, into the stream of what-ifs and might-have-beens. 

I don’t feel this way exclusively toward strangers. I feel this way about my best friends, and even about people as close to me as my sister. I forget that my sister has an entire interior world that I’ll never fully enter. 

She has her own thoughts looping in the shower. Her own people who made her laugh that week. Her own worries she might not voice because they sound too big or too small. We come from the same family, and yet, she’s built a life with nuances and details and side characters that I know nothing about. 

But this feeling of sonder doesn’t make my connections less meaningful. It makes it more so. Knowing I’ll never fully know anyone is what makes it feel like such a gift when someone lets me in, even a little. 

As the people I spent four years with all diverge in different paths through college, I feel even smaller for the fact that our lives will all look different in a few months. The routines and spaces we once shared will be replaced by entirely new environments.

I think that’s what makes sonder feel so real right now. The people who have been central to my life will continue growing in ways I won’t always get to see or understand. It makes me value the moment when our lives did overlap. 

We don’t always get the full story. But we can bear witness. We can still nod at the mystery of it all and say: I don’t know you, but I see that you’re here. And that’s not nothing.