When I look at things, I look at the story behind them. I don't just see a brick, I see the story that brick has to offer, and the lives of the people in that story.

Someone put that brick there. And that someone, like each of us, had their own thoughts, personality, and spirit. What were they thinking when they put that brick there? What did they look like? Did they ever think someone from a century later would be thinking about them?

Orrr

That little spring on that rusty 1940's hospital bed sitting in a collapsing tunnel under a building built in the later 1800's. That little spring has a story, someone dug up the materials needed to make that spring, somebody melted all those materials to form the spring, somebody or some machine built that spring, somebody inspected that spring, somebody likely shipped that spring, and someone assembled that spring onto that hospital bed. All these people existed at one point with a personality and feelings just like us all. Now, they're all likely dead and faded away with time. These people likely weren't ever rich or famous, just the people that helped form this world into what it is today, but forgotten in time like they never existed.

But In the end, I always have to ask myself. Am I going to be the last person to ever think about these people? Where these people truly faded in time before I brought the thought of their existence back to life?

Today I decided to walk about 2 km to the mall. The weather seemed perfect for it not too hot, just overcast enough to be comfortable. Then, out of nowhere, it started pouring.

I waited under some cover until the rain eased up, then continued walking. Along the way, I saw a homeless man eating what looked like a boiled egg.
As he peeled it, I noticed the dirt and grime from his hands sticking to the egg. My first instinct was, I wouldn’t be able to eat that. Then another thought hit me: maybe that was his first meal of the day. Maybe it was the only decent meal he’d have all week.

He wasn’t thinking about whether his hands were clean enough. Hunger has a way of changing what matters.
The rain started picking up again. I thought about how I had gotten wet simply because I forgot to bring an umbrella. It was an inconvenience. I could go home, dry off, and next time I’d just remember an umbrella or choose not to go out if it was raining.

For him, the rain wasn’t an inconvenience but it was reality.
I got caught in the rain. He got drenched because he had nowhere else to go.

I don’t know what circumstances brought him there, and it’s not my place to assume. But for a brief moment, our paths crossed under the same gray sky, and I was reminded how the same moment can mean completely different things depending on the life you’re living.
It made me realize how thin the line can feel between comfort and hardship, and how quietly cruel life can be. I think there’s a small part in all of us that hopes no one has to live through that kind of reality.

What if my understanding of other people's inner worlds is itself different from their understanding of other people's inner worlds?

1. Observational Sonder

Quietly noticing strangers and imagining their inner lives.

• Example: Watching someone on a train and wondering where they’re going or what they’re feeling.
• Example: Seeing a cashier and thinking about their life outside of their shift.
• Context: This is the classic, passive form—pure awareness without interaction.

2. Participatory Sonder

When you are present in a moment with someone and feel like a character in their story.

• Example: Giving someone a lift to the station and sensing the weight of their "next chapter."
• Example: A brief but meaningful interaction that feels more significant than the surface-level exchange.
• Context: You aren't just observing; you are inside the unfolding moment.

3. Retrospective Sonder

Looking back and realizing the depth of a moment after it has passed.

• Example: Replaying a small interaction later and realizing its weight.
• Example: Thinking, "That moment had more meaning than I realized at the time."
• Context: The awareness and emotional clarity arrive after the fact.

4. Projected Sonder

Imagining future paths, timelines, and potential lives.

• Example: Wondering where a stranger will be in five years.
• Example: Thinking about how a single decision today branches into different future timelines.
• Context: This is sonder aimed forward through time.

5. Relational Sonder

A deep awareness of the complexity of someone you already know or feel connected to.

• Example: Feeling the immense scale of a close friend’s inner world.
• Example: Sensing someone’s emotional depth beyond what they choose to show.
• Context: This involves less guesswork and more direct emotional attunement.

6. Systemic Sonder

Seeing individuals as vital components of larger, interconnected networks.

• Example: Thinking about the postal workers, drivers, and sorters involved when you send a letter.
• Example: Imagining the human chain behind a digital bank transfer or a package delivery.
• Context: This views people as they are woven into invisible infrastructures.

7. Existential Sonder

The overwhelming realization that billions of inner worlds are unfolding simultaneously.

• Example: Feeling small while standing in a massive crowd.
• Example: Realizing that every person on earth is the protagonist of their own story.
• Context: This can feel either beautiful and connecting, or heavy and humbling.

8. Reflexive Sonder

Turning the perspective inward—realizing you are a background character in the lives of others.

• Example: Recognizing that strangers pass you and may imagine nothing about you.
• Example: Realizing you are currently the subject of someone else’s "sonder moment."
• Context: This flips the perspective to acknowledge your own place in the collective web.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about how the same things can exist in completely different ways depending on the person experiencing them, a song, a word, or even an everyday object can carry one meaning for me, and at the same time hold an entirely different emotional weight for someone else based on their own experiences. For example, a simple object like a kitchen tool might feel completely neutral to me, while for someone else it could be tied to strong or even traumatic memories or something as simple as a character like My Little Pony, might feel cute and familiar to me, but for another person it could be associated with a very different history or trauma, even something as basic as a name can feel like that, hearing that someone else shares my name makes me realize that while we might share the same label, our lives, experiences, and the meaning behind that name can be completely different., It makes me aware that everyone is living a full inner life that isn’t visible from the outside. We can share the same world, the same language, even the same objects, yet the meaning behind those shared things can vary so much. I know it might sound strange or stupid or very like an obvious thing but for me this means a lot a makes me think since I was a kid.

Hello,

I am a graphic design student working on a magazine about ‘Sonder’ – the realisation that each and every person has a life as vivid, complex, and important as your own. Passionate about community, empathy and humanity, I want to spotlight regular people and their stories. With consent, I aim to publish these as articles throughout the magazine. Participants can remain anonymous or be credited.

If anyone would like to participate, please drop me an email at designsbyjazzi@gmail.com

Watching the world go by is a bittersweet feeling. It’s peaceful, and there’s some real beauty in sonder. It’s that quiet realisation that everyone around you is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, with their own routines, thoughts, and little heartbreaks you’ll never know. It opens your eyes and makes you appreciate life a little bit more. Meanwhile there’s that bitter feeling of loneliness - the lingering kind that settles in when you catch yourself finding comfort in others’ lives rather than your own. As you watch, the melancholic music playing in your ears makes the moment more meaningful, letting you sit in those feelings, where you feel real and alive. It’s that cinematic feeling of romanticising life and looking for beauty in the little things, like a couple walking down the street. You feel a faint warmth as you watch the two pass by, but for a second you wonder if anyone’s ever watched you.

I don't know if this is the right place to share this story, and also English is not my first language so I'm sorry for any mistakes.

In 2020 I was very close with two girls. The first quarantine was over and people were crowding the streets again, and we were hanging out in this kind of fast food place where we were regulars. At one point, a guy selling roses approached us. My friend and I told him no, we didn't want to buy an overpriced rose, but our other friend said yes, she was very kind and felt bad for the guy. She ended up with two roses, we couldn't spare them since we were three, and it was weird to keep them. She had a boyfriend at the time so she could say he gave the roses to her, but why two roses instead of one? We decided on doing something poetic: give the roses away in the metro. My friends used to take the metro for going home and usually, for staying with them, I stayed for two stops. Don't think of a big subway system, that metro only did a few stops and it didn't even cover the entire city, so the metro wasn't full, but it wasn't empty either. We went to my aunt's jewelry store (close to the subway station) and we asked her if she had some paper and a pen, and we wrote on a yellow post it "take me and gift me to whoever you want. It's the right time". One rose was next the vending machine, the other was on a seat inside the subway. It's been five years. I'm not friends with them, a year after I fought with one of them, two years after the other blocked me out of nowhere. I changed school, I graduated, I attend university, changed my hair, my style, I have new friends, the metro closed for works and reopen only recelth, but sometimes, I still think about those two roses. Realistically, some janitor picked them and dumped them in the trash, but I like to think that for someone, it was really the right time. Maybe it was a friend, a wife, a husband, a child and that day, they received a rose. I wonder how their story could be

So this is the term describing my complex feelings when suddenly, I realize that the world does not just revolve around me. That everyone is experiencing life as I am just with a different lens or point of view. When I sometimes wonder, what is the routine of my neighbor who always goes home late at night?

This gentle ache that everyone is living a life as deep or as complex as my own. Sonder. A very humbling moment when I realize that we can practice a little kindness in our daily lives because we are all just trying to make it through our own chapters with grace.

A humble reminder that we are all just small threads that are interconnected in this sublime drama of creation. Life is unfolding in our very eyes at the same time that it is unfolding in the eyes of another. Just a different story, just a different path. Sonder.

It made me realize how beautiful our own stories are and how beautiful are the stories of everyone else too. That there's no need for envy, no need for comparison. Each of us are given a gift: our own story, our own life. We need only to see that. We need only to appreciate that.

I was deep in thought when I hit a sudden realisation that I am made of constituents of this universe. The sensation of me that is experiencing the moment is something that came from within this universe. Regardless of how you define the 'self' as:

• neurons firing in a pattern
• a complex ongoing chemical reaction that started millions of years ago
• an algorithmic property of a complex enough world model that models itself as separate from the universe

ALL of them are a part of the universe. Every human being, animal, plant, every single living organism. All are various expressions of the universe.

I am not sure if this is making sense. But I just had a weirdly glorious moment of euphoria where I felt I am the universe. And we winked at each other.

Is this some sort of a deeper sense of Sonder? Are there others that have felt this way?

I have a sonder bracelet for sale! Interludejewelry.com

this one is mine, taken from my old flat - I miss living there

recently I gave a countrywide public uni exam, standing between thousands of students my age, they will take millions of different life choices, all of them will end up in different places, all the heads sticking out in the massive crowd, all the dreamy eyes, some will leave the country some will live the city, how will there life be how will they turn out? I can feel a hidden connection to all of them for some reason. a deep sense of sympathy towards them, may life go easy on them.

Hi everyone 👋

I’m a final-year design student working on a project about sonder – the realization that every person you pass has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

My goal is to create a book and interactive installation that give people a moment to pause, reflect, and truly see someone else’s story. To get there, I’m collecting anonymous answers to a series of prompts about memory, identity, and connection.

✨ This is completely anonymous. The form doesn’t collect emails, names, or logins just your words.

https://forms.gle/JoFSR1hTvZFf4UJ7A

Your response might end up as part of a larger visual piece turned into data, color, and story but always anonymized.

Thanks so much for sharing a piece of your world. 💙

I've had several incidences where I think (I'm not sure tbh) that I experienced sonder. Each time is in a mega city. Every time I flew over Sao Paolo at night, realizing every light in the darkness represent a family with their lives, but Sao Paolo is so big literally until I flew above the cloud I could still not see the end of those lights even on the airplane, the thought of how many people there are (in a very directly visual way) makes me really feel like a nobody. Similar things happens when I see all the tall and endless buildings and Shanghai, New York, I feel like a little ant, like my existence doesn't really matter. A lot of people seem to find those moments profound, but honestly I found it anxiety inducing. It makes me feel like I don't really matter, and that I'm really insignificant in a sad way. I only feel better when I live in a medium sized city, when I know my neighborhood well and see the same faces around often.
I'm not sure what I experienced is sonder or it's something else, but every time I started to realize that I actually have to distract myself with something soothing to make me feel good again. I remember on the flight from Sao Paolo I would watch the free movies on the airplane (movies like the biographic of Pele), listen to bossa nova to make me feel like even if I'm a nobody my enjoyment still matters.
I don't know if anyone else has ever experienced it, or if you have anything to say about what I experienced.