07 Aug Just for a Moment
Ella came home from the bookstore with a little hardback called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. She flipped through it, reading me words that don’t exist in a typical dictionary but should. One stuck with me.
Sonder: 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.
It reminded me of a short video (click here to watch) I often show in trainings from the Cleveland Clinic about empathy. It begins with a quote from Henry David Thoreau: Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
The camera moves through hospital hallways, passing patients, nurses, doctors, and visitors. As it moves, quiet captions appear above each person’s head. Celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary. Waiting for a new heart. Doesn’t completely understand. Worried about how to take care of her. Just found out he’s going to be a dad. Nearing the end of a 12-hour shift.
We watch them pass one another as strangers in motion, unaware of what the others are carrying. And in that quiet, you begin to see just how much we miss.
We don’t have captions. Most of the time, there are no visible signs of what we are carrying. And across the world, eight billion people are living eight billion different versions of today.
It’s a reminder to move through our days with humility, out of respect for all we can’t see.
The Cleveland Clinic video ends with a question: If you could stand in someone else’s shoes, see what they see, feel what they feel—would you treat them differently?
Sonder reminds us that we already do. We pass through each other’s stories every day, even if just for a moment.
The real question is: how do we want to show up in it?