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.
from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
We never truly know another do we?
I’m very pleased that there is a word for this. I’ve long known that this realisation – felt when I see a plane pass overhead, or a train cross in front of me – made me happy. To find there is a word that is exactly IT…more happy. Thank you for sharing it. xx
I came across it by accident whilst wandering around on the internet and loved it. What a clever fellow, inventing a whole new dictionary of words. He has a video for it too – did you see that?