I could not sleep and was doing what we all have a habit of, looking at my phone, scrolling through social media. I came across a word I had not heard before: sonder. Now while I had not been introduced to the word, I have often pondered its meaning.” In a state of sonder, you realize that you are part of everyone else’s stories, and that you influence the lives of those around you. You are at once a hero, an extra, and a supporting cast member in overlapping stories. Lots of the great authors I read remind me to reflect on how everyone around me is fighting battles I don’t know about, how everyone is truly trying their best and that we are all just walking together. How great it is then, to have discovered a noun for this realization. And how it goes further to talk about how we are not all main characters taking up space in each other’s lives, that in the majority we are but a minor character, a single interaction, a background extra like on a movie set. It is the realization that everyone’s life is equally rich, complex, diverse and layered as our own that is the aha moment. I think there is a tendency to get lost in our own thoughts, pressures and life and we get lulled into a sense that not only does everyone have it a bit easier, but that we are separate, sonder is realizing we all part of the cast.
UltimateInclusion.com 