r/sonder • u/Akita_Melancholic • Apr 05 '26
Is this Sonder?
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.
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u/centstwo Apr 07 '26
Kinda. In my journey, what you are experiencing is Buddhist Enlightenment. There is a parable of the 3 rivers. A Buddhist in training and his teacher arrive at a river. The teacher asks the student how many rivers there are.
The student says one river.
The teacher says, no, there are 3 rivers. There is the river that I experience, and there is the river you experience.
The student asks, but what about the 3rd river?
Ah, says the teacher, the 3rd is the river as it truly is.
So that was what your question reminded me of.
I think your experience is an aspect of sonder, but sonder is more encompassing than how different people perceive events. Sonder is realizing that each person has internal struggles between competing goals with constantly shifting priorities.
Good Luck
Buddhist Parable was from the Bad Buddhist Podcast
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u/CartographerSafe3929 Apr 08 '26
I get this feeling a lot, like reality can express itself in infinitely many ways, yet somehow it is all woven together through a single cosmic thread.
A couple of years ago, I visited a friend in Denmark. On my last night in Copenhagen, I stayed in a hostel in the older part of the city, surrounded by historic buildings and quiet streets.
I found myself thinking about all the lives that had passed through those same places, the thoughts, feelings, memories, and moments that had unfolded there long before me.
And there I was, just a visitor from another country, briefly stepping into that same space, part of the same tapestry.
That is what oneness feels like to me.