Sonder

Oh hey, how you doin’?

So, you know those weeks where you’re crawling into bed at 9pm absolutely exhausted, you know the type of exhausted that’s the result of such drive ignited by the sparks of passion you may have lost for a little while there? The type that’s a result of running on that adrenaline you actually crave? Look, if you don’t know, maybe you should… I mean, I feel like I wouldn’t ever want a life without this!

Anyway, that’s the last 2 weeks for me. I run much better when it’s like this funnily enough, I just need that ‘off’ switch, in which has actually been forced due to the complete crash come 9.30pm. Lights out, literally and metaphorically.

So, due to my lack of an actual office space, my favourite café is my most productive area of choice to spend almost the entire day, with multiple coffees, usually still in my active wear (Showered, it’s okay... I race home, change and put clean active wear on – that way I am automatically exempt from the whole needing to fix hair or face thing). My all-time favourite being the one & only, Timber café. (mentioned previously in my blog titled ‘Incase you didn’t know, I smile about you’ – ooh that sounded professional!)

So whilst sitting there, half the time having to make it extreeeemely obvious that I do have AirPods in for the sake of not looking like a complete lunatic when on a phonecall, I find myself surrounded by so many different people. So many of these people I am actually familiar with, to the extent of knowing their usual orders, or routine allowing their Timber visits. I find even whilst working, in the corner of my eye I take note of those who walk in, as I get ready to offer up my spot and move to the corner of the large bench, or couches – lets be real, I’m alone, on a laptop just working & I know damn well what it’s like trying to hunch over and eat. They need the better spots more than I do. So far each time I do this, they are beyond thankful.

I sit and smile so ridiculously cheesy – It’s fine, I could totally be smiling on the phone – AirPods remember.

I’m working on a large project, another email pops up, adding to the unread load within my inbox I know is right there. I have missed calls, unread texts. I’m stressed. For a moment I actually allow a slight feeling of anxiousness to overwhelm me.

I over hear laughter from the little girl sitting next to me, I look up at this gorgeous little face and poke my tongue out – she loves it. Yes, I proceed to play a short game of hide and seek behind my diary – look, I swear I mean it when I say I am productive here!

I look around and I see two ladies deep in conversation. One of the ladies beside her lays her head in her hands for a moment before then grabbing her hand in a comforting manner.

It’s those moments that I feel the overwhelming sense of ‘Sonder’, that’s what they call it.

I have absolutely loved that word ever since I learnt the meaning.

Instantly, that stress is diminished and every slight anxious feeling I was just flooded with – gone.

Sonder

n. the realization that each random passer-by 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.

I understand that everything each of us feel is all completely relevant and on our own scale of severity in our lives. Someone’s absolute worst thing to be tackling could be a mark on a Uni assignment, that’s the end of their world. Another could be losing their job. Another person, finding out they have a month left to live. Heavy.

It’s all, to them, at that same level. It’s what they are finding the hardest point in their life.

I just love how in all of this, you can feel such a sense of realisation can bring you so instantly into being present.

Sonder… 

There was no real point to this, but it’s a pretty damn epic feeling.

P.S. Once again – not proof reading this… aint nobody got time for that.