Sonder
In which I observe a writing habit I might like to break, and reflect on a childhood memory of sonder. Voice version to come Thursday/Friday.
A writing habit observed
Through conversation, research, or pure chance, I’ll find a topic that is interesting to me and that I feel I have something to say about. I’ll write until I feel like I have exhausted my interest and insight. The pieces which end up here in your inbox or on Substack often end up being around 2000-3000 words. I’ll write over the course of a few days, and then spend a couple of day editing and tweaking until I’m content that they are legible.
These essays in their production and form replicate what was drummed into me at university. I studied Geography. For two out of three terms for three years, we would write one or two 2000–4000-word essays per week on subjects ranging from glaciology to climate science to the structure of the British economy to the American ‘wild west’. Each week we would face intense hour-long discussions with a lecturing professor, where we were expected to have a good grasp of the topic at hand and be able to engage in back and forth discourse. I never thrived in this system; I managed to get by. The relentless pace and absence of opportunity for knowledge to percolate didn’t suit my need for unconscious processing.
Whilst I enjoyed the variety of topics studied and access to knowledge facilitated, by the end of the three years I had lost any enthusiasm for reading and writing. The strict schedule of gulping information down, processing, and regurgitating (like a parent penguin) in a very specific form took its toll. Reflecting on the form that my writing now often takes in these newsletters, I wonder whether my expression is inhibited by my unconscious adherence to the 3000-word essay format etched into my body between 2008 and 2011. Is my writing style a habitual, learned aspect of self that reflects external expectations of epistemological productivity?
So I may try some different things in the coming weeks. To start with, here’s a short reflection on sonder.
Sonder
Sat on the stationary number 13 bus on London Road, staring out at the rush hour traffic. Aged 13 too. I’m in the window seat, we’re in the middle of the bus. I’m too scared to sit in the back seats and will be until sometime in my 20s. You needed to have confidence to sit there. There’s a clear social dynamic on the 13, a hierarchy of sorts, and the back of the bus is claimed by those with the untucked shirts, the short-fat ties, the trainers-rather-than-regulation-black-‘cornish pasty’ shoes, the blazer-sleeves rolled up. The kids who talk back to the teachers and challenge the authority of elder civilian passengers head on. The children who respond to the provocations of the colonial school culture with acts of justified rebellion and disobedience (of which I am later envious), and in so doing perpetuate their position within the British class hierarchy.
The middle (class) seats are uncomfortably close to the action when the back seats are rowdy, but they’re raised above the front seats and the main standing area so they give a good view of everything, inside and outside. Also, you’re less likely to have to give your seat up when the bus gets busy. The 13 always gets busy. So many crushed stuffy rides pressed up body to body, so many times late to school or trudging home by foot after the bus barrels past, full of sweaty boys. 10 years later and I get flashbacks when I board the Northern Line at Tufnell Park (I walk further to get on one stop earlier than the closest station, Kentish Town; it’s still too busy), neck bent uncomfortably into the door frame, the damp chest of a plain-suited man (boy) palpating awfully against my soft upper arm.
Anyway, I’m sat there on the 13 staring out as we creep inch by inch towards my stop, and suddenly I have a stunning realisation. Every single person out there and on the bus, those I can see and those I can’t—they all have a complex life like mine, as full of feeling, thought, experience, affect as my own. Even when I’m not thinking of them, feeling this sudden flood of awareness like I am in this moment. There are billions and billions of people alive and there have been billions and billions of people that are now dead. All with unique and intricate interior lives.
This profound feeling is called sonder.
I turned to my friend and asked whether he’d ever thought about how people have their own complex lives, just like my own but different. I couldn’t convey the feeling it gave me, but I wanted to talk about it. It seemed like a revelation worth discussing.
He said No and looked at me askance. I didn’t bring it up again.
Why I felt this sonder when I did, I don’t know. It’s a powerful formative memory that I often return to, both the feeling itself and my friend’s response. I wonder whether everyone has felt this, or if it was triggered by specific circumstances present in my life that day on the 13 bus which aren’t universal. I wonder what role it plays in empathy, both felt and cognitive. When I access sonder, I feel a sense of connection and awe that is directed towards all human life past and present. Even if I cannot imagine what all these inner lives feel like to experience, I can at least feel the weight and inherent value of these lives’ existence. My theory of mind and conceptualisation of the inner lives of others may be autistic in its unwillingness to assume and generalise, but in its complexity and weight felt through the wonder of sonder it is meaningful and connective.
Prompts and unresolved questions
Do accusations of online fakery stem from an absence of sonder, a disbelief that there could possibly be so many full human lives out there in the world?
Is it possible to engender this feeling, to provoke this affective response; to help people feel sonder?
Have you ever seen art that made you feel this way?
What made you feel sonder for the first time? What made you feel it most recently?
With love and solidarity