I’ve written before1Well, I think I have… about the concept of sonder: the profound realization that every other person you meet has had a life experience as complex and rich as your own. It’s a newish word2See: The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows though I didn’t realize how new until I started writing this. It’s been one of those words that was true for me the minute I heard it.
In terms of mind-blowingness, it’s up there with seeing a recent image of space, learning that every single dot in it isn’t just a star but an entire galaxy, that those thousands of galaxies you’re seeing are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the entire night sky, and then considering (and I mean really considering) the scope of the universe and how little we understand.
The next time you’re at the grocery store, think about how every single person you see has lived a lot of life. Now expand that and think about a crowd at a football game. Now expand to a city, a state, a country… when you get to the entire population of humans, you might need to have a little lie down. Every person you ever meet or will meet is a galaxy unto themselves.
Lost in Time
Last night, I was taking Olive on the final walk of the evening before going to bed. As we walked past a neighbors house, I noticed that she was walking with me, but looking intently at something. I hadn’t noticed the black and white cat lying on the edge of the driveway, motionless, watching us just as intently.3We have several feral cats in the neighborhood. A few inches away, still within paw’s reach, was a dead mouse. Olive and I were walking past a recent murder and I wouldn’t have noticed if Olive hadn’t seen it. Amazingly, she didn’t bark or lunge, but just took in the scene. The cat didn’t move other than to track us with its eyes.
In the twenty steps it took to walk past, I told myself that I needed to tell Mary about it the next day, and immediately recognized that I would most likely forget the moment happened. For that matter, I probably wouldn’t ever think about it again once we got around the block.
And as I thought that, I had a sonder-like realization: my life has been full of these tiny experiences yet I don’t remember the vast majority of them. I don’t say that I “can’t” remember them, because our brains are incredible things, and I suspect that with the right triggers, that memory is actually in there… somewhere. But for all practical purposes, those ephemeral events are lost, never to be considered by any entity ever again.
For the most part, they’re inconsequential. We’re squarely in “trees falling in the forest” territory. If Olive hadn’t seen the cat, if we hadn’t taken that walk at that exact time, it may as well have never have happened; there would have been no observer. Yet, the tree did fall, the sound was made, the mouse is dead. Maybe a different way of thinking about that old brain teaser is, “If you hear a tree fall in the forest, but you don’t remember the event, did it make a sound?”
All These Moments
And here’s where my mind really started running into the deep weeds and dropping down rabbit holes. If we extend the concept of sonder to other species, to the sheer, overwhelming quantity of events that happen every single microsecond, the number of living creatures, all having a full life to the extent that their own biology allows…4It is, as the kids say, a mind fuck.
Then comes that moment, as with contemplating the universe, when it simply becomes too much and we have to shrink our frame of reference back down to something manageable. Contemplating how much has happened in just the last few seconds is difficult. In the time it’s taken you to read this paragraph, 30 babies have been born, 15 people have died, someone’s gotten married, divorced, gotten a job, lost a job, eaten a meal, killed a mosquito, cut down a tree, written a song, locked the door. Now consider that most people on earth are currently experiencing something they probably won’t remember for the rest of their lives. In most ways that matter, the event didn’t happen.
When I was learning about atoms, it was difficult to grasp that everything one can touch is more empty space than matter. An atom is more empty space than particles. And the same is true of my life experience. I’m more forgotten moments than remembered ones, yet I’m full of rich life experiences. As are you and everyone else.
But as full as our lives are, most of it is empty space.
Notes
- 1Well, I think I have…
- 2
- 3We have several feral cats in the neighborhood.
- 4It is, as the kids say, a mind fuck.