/SAHN-der/
n. 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.

Sonder | from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

from John Koenig on Vimeo

“The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com) is a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig. Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language – to give name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for.

The author’ s mission is to capture the aches, demons, vibes, joys and urges that roam the wilderness of the psychological interior. Each sorrow is bagged, tagged and tranquilized, then released gently back into the subconscious.”