Sonder

Perhaps it's a side effect of being in one's thirties, but I've acquired a really annoying habit of carrying around a giant yard stick of Time that I compare everything against. I've lived through 11,735 days so far, which are all just the quivering water behind an increasingly distant and fading wake. But something about that tick on the yardstick is oddly satisfying – the passage of time is swift and doesn't slow down for obstacles, and reflecting on a tangible memory of “X years ago today” is sort of a way to ground myself in that swift current. X years ago today, I did a thing, and then a bunch of other things happened, and here I am – and I'm not dead yet.


In Japan, Obon is a holiday which celebrates our ancestors who have passed away. In celebration of this holiday is a festival called Bon Odori, with boisterous music and dancing. As the story goes, a disciple of the Buddha was able to look upon his deceased mother in the afterlife and found that she had fallen into a terrible realm and was suffering greatly. After making offerings to monks, he was able to see his mother released from this suffering, but he also was able to see the true nature of her selflessness and all of the sacrifices she had made for him when she was alive. So, he danced with joy – and this is what is celebrated at Bon Odori.


On August 5^th, there were many Bon Odori festivals around Japan. It was Saturday, so we were planning out our day and deciding which festival to enjoy. Since we've been hopeless city slickers since moving to Japan, we decided to head to the famous Shibuya Crossing in the middle of Tokyo, which was staging a huge festival. Scientific research has determined that approximately 18 million shit-tons (scientific measurement) of people walk through Shibuya Crossing every 7 minutes. So why not go there to deeply reflect on the sacrifices and legacies of our deceased loved ones? Right...? Yeah, I don't know what we were thinking either.


At one point in the day, my Yard Stick of Time slapped me in the face. August 5^th. It was August 5^th. It had been exactly one year to the day since my beloved Grandpa Bob passed away. Suddenly, going to a Bon Odori festival to celebrate the dead in the most humanity-packed intersection in the world seemed a little disingenuous bordering on awkwardly ironic... but on we went. Grandpa would have found the irony hilarious.


We walked from Shinjuku to Shibuya, so basically in between two of the hugest neighborhoods Tokyo (and the world) has to offer. Being a festival weekend, there were a ton of people out and about in traditional dress, wearing beautiful yukatas. I started noticing how all the women had perfectly constructed, braided up-dos, and every group of people who shuffled past us were dressed to the nine's, so dressed to the kyo's if we're getting linguistically technical.


In the 4 kilometers we walked, we saw so many people. Dozens, hundreds, thousands. Jan stopped at one point to give candy to a little girl who was upset and her face completely lit up. We walked past a couple of Americans who asked me to take their picture holding ice cream in Harajuku and they were so over-the-top thankful. It occurred to me – this wasn't just a fun day out for me. There are thousands of people in immediate proximity to me who are having a fun day of their own. They're sharing this day with their family and friends, they're perhaps thinking of and honoring their ancestors for Obon, they all have lives too. I'm just a tiny little flash, a person in the background of a picture they took, in the incredibly complex, sometimes beautiful and sometimes tragic lives of thousands of people whose stories I will never know.


Somewhere between Shinjuku and Shibuya, thousands of miles away from the only life and family I've ever known, which is now that quivering water in a fading wake which is still capable of throwing turbulence my way – I was lost for words. I am a wordy-ass lady which if you're reading this you already know, so that's saying something.


“Jan,” I said, as I watched the little girl he had given candy walk ahead of us holding hands with her dad. “Do you ever think about the fact that there are so many people around you who have stories and lives that are just as crazy as ours? Doesn't that freak you out a bit?”


“You know, there's actually a word for that,” he said.


He was right. That word is “sonder.”


Paraphrasing isn't necessary when the original is so well-stated, so I'll leave you with this definition:


“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.”


We are simultaneously the movie stars of our own lives, and the blink-of-an-eye extra in the millions of movies centered around everyone we encounter. What will your role be? It's inevitable that to many people, you will just be a blur if you even exist at all. But perhaps sometimes, instead of being a blur, you hand a little girl some candy. You take a woman's camera and spend a few minutes giving her and friend a photo shoot. The rough pixelation of your passing presence in a stranger's story starts to come to life more vividly, like a photo slowly rendering, more and more in focus. In a way, this is immortalizing. You exist in their memory.


I initially thought that celebrating my late ancestors was poorly done by heading to the biggest city in the world to get lost in the chaos, as opposed to perhaps finding a lovely forest and a babbling brook where I could sit and deeply contemplate their lives. I was wrong.


My dearly departed grandpa was an educator and a published expert in brain development, and he had a favorite phrase - “we are a social species.” Solitude is a wonderful thing, but we truly do depend on the people around us to develop and strengthen the complex webs of our lives. Being surrounded by so many people during Bon Odori was a great reminder that I have an unspoken, inherent obligation to the people I pass by, to “first, do no harm”, as the Hippoocratic oath states.


Obon is a celebration of the stars in our lives who have died. But it is also a reminder that you have such an amazing opportunity to be a star in the lives of those around you – even in a small way. Smile at the stranger who is frowning. Be kind. Be present. You never know when such a small act might render your image a little more clearly in the story of someone else's life.


I miss you, Grandpa. I am sad that you died a year ago (according to my yard stick), but I will always be thankful for your starring role in the movie of my life.