{"id":1565,"date":"2026-09-02T14:53:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2026-09-02T14:53:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:53:51","slug":"shuffling-toward-sonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/?p=1565","title":{"rendered":"Shuffling Toward Sonder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There is a word I have recently grown fond of: sonder<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It means recognizing that every person we pass is living a life as complicated, layered, and emotionally vivid as our own. The stranger in the grocery store. The woman staring too long at her phone. The impatient driver. The waiter who forgot the order. The man talking too loudly at the next table. Each one is the main character in a life we know almost nothing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the word, but I am less convinced that we naturally live by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us move through the world from the center of our own story. We know the full history behind our moods, irritations, and silences. We know what happened twenty minutes before we snapped at someone and what happened twenty years earlier that made the moment especially tender. We try to manage our output accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other people rarely receive the same generosity. We see the behavior, not the backstory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone is rude, selfish, difficult, aloof, arrogant, impatient. We make the diagnosis quickly because judgment is efficient. Curiosity takes longer. Perhaps sonder begins in the small space between them. Not excusing bad behavior. Not abandoning discernment. Certainly not pretending that everyone deserves unlimited access to our lives simply because they have suffered. But wondering\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened to you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are you carrying that I cannot see?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life has taught me that people can behave badly because of wounds we know nothing about. The controlling person may once have lived without safety. The relentless achiever may still be trying to earn affection that never came. The person desperate to be needed may never have learned that simply being was enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding this does not erase responsibility. In fact, true sonder may require both compassion and accountability. Your history may explain you, but it does not give you permission to harm anyone who enters your space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the balance I find myself shuffling toward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People give us who they are, not what we deserve. But we must give ourselves what we deserve, and hard as it may be, we must see people more fully without surrendering our own judgment. To recognize that the irritating stranger beside me contains an entire universe, while remembering that I do too, is where sonder becomes more than an interesting word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It becomes a practice. An ability to look again, listen a little longer, assume less, and remain curious throughout it all. Remembering that every person I encounter carries memories, disappointments, loyalties, fears, private jokes, dead parents, difficult children, old loves, unspoken regrets, and hopes they may never tell another soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will never know most of those stories, but simply remembering that they exist may change how we move through the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe we do not arrive at empathy all at once; we just keep shuffling toward it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a word I have recently grown fond of: sonder. It means recognizing that every person we pass is living a life as complicated, layered, and emotionally vivid as our own. The stranger in the grocery store. The woman staring too long at her phone. The impatient driver. The waiter who forgot the order. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,27,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foodforthought","category-reflection","category-word-of-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prolificpreambles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}