nhiều chuyện, by angel lin

sonder. n.
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background.

I love new york city. really, I do.

the rush of hot wind that warns of an incoming subway train, the sound of jazz filling in the lulls of the conversations taking place on each street corner, the sweaty surrender to the humid air as you accept a state of frizzy hair and shiny skin. i am personally partial to the vibrancy of the cultural enclaves that have stubbornly found a home in this mammoth of a city. (I may have been four years old the last time I stepped foot on asia but as soon as I breathed in the air of flushing’s chinatown, the smell of the vietnamese street markets came back to me as vividly as times square). it’s a city that has always enchanted me—from a distance and as a visitor.

I spent the past weekend visiting friends in new york. as expected when you combine quality time with quality people, it was a delight. the trip was packed full of incredible sights, food, drinks, and memories. between each of our escapades, we navigated the city’s winding subway system—alongside the 2 million new yorkers who utilize the trains each day.

I personally experience sonder in my life quite a bit. to be honest, it’s an something (an emotion, acknowledgement, realization—whatever you want to call it) that brings about significant discomfort. not necessarily in the recognition of the fact that I am nothing but a small and insignficant part of our society and the rest of the universe (though this is terrifying in and of itself). rather, it’s the contemplation of complexity and nuance in the lives of others: the acknowledgement that each human being I pass by on the street, stand behind in the grocery line, wait alongside in traffic, or read about in an obituary has had an experience of life that is just as deeply complicated and overwhelmingly emotional as my own.

sonder invokes within me an intense experience of empathy—or, it would be more accurate to say, an attempt of empathy. for how could I possibly even begin to understand the life of a stranger I know nearly nothing about? how could I possibly even begin to imagine the lives of 7.7 billion other humans in the world?

while paralyzingly uncomfortable, I think sonder is an important thing. it’s what reminds us that the people we interact with are people. it reminds us that we are part of the larger community of humanity. it reminds us that strangers experience heartbreak, joy, sadness, jealousy, pride, shame, and dreams. it reminds us to have empathy and compassion for strangers simply for the sake of them being human, too. it’s what keeps us human.

while riding the subways in new york, I couldn’t help but feel emotionally overwhelmed. I struggled to pinpoint exactly why, at first. my friends and I loudly laughed at our own jokes and excitedly told each other stories as the packed trains bustled from stop to stop. each time the conversation lulled and I took the opportunity to look around the train car, I experienced a moment of deafening silence. I became struck with a familiar discomfort; suddenly, we all became cold strangers. everyone in the train avoiding eye contact and pretending that we weren’t occupying the same space.

in a city with 8.38 million people, sonder becomes a liability. to imagine that the woman with her hair wrapped in a turquoise scarf sitting in tired silence with her eyes closed in the corner seat of the e-train on her commute from work is returning to a lonely and empty apartment. to think about the years of physical labor that formed the callouses on the hands of the man gripping onto the metal pole on the c-train with a exhausted look on his face. to get a tiny glimpse into the anxieties, excitement, and insecurities embedded into the all-important social life of the high school brunette dressed in a purple sequin dress on her way to a school dance with her friends. to pretend to know the story of the chinese grandmother dragging her cart filled with a technicolor array of plastic bags, printed notices, aromatic fruits down the steps of the m-train station. how could you not be overhwelmed with emotion?

while taking a moment to appreciate these brief displays of humanity can be heartening, the sheer amount of people you interact with on a daily basis in new york makes this nearly impossible. just one stroll down one avenue during daylight hours means sidestepping and sharing a walkway with at least 35 other pedestrians. waiting at a stoplight and contemplating the timing of a strategic and artful jaywalk can mean sharing the risk with 20 other strangers. assuming that your subway car is only ever filled at half capacity, that’s another 100 potential people sharing your commute to work (and that’s not even considering the people coming in and out on each stop and taking multiple trains). in a typical day, the average new yorker could easily interact with over 500 strangers they may never see again.

with a life so filled with life, how can one be expected to still have empathy? we simply see too many strangers to still have the ability to feel emotions for them. when you look around the train car, people will be sitting side by side fully squished up against one other, but will be actively looking down at the ground and avoiding eye contact. no one would dare strike up a conversation or even attempt to acknowledge the incredulity of the physical situation they are in. it’s so comical, you could almost laugh. it’s easier to pretend that the person physically next to you does not exist than it is to momentarily acknoweldge their humanity and interact with them as such. mutual dehumanization is an inevitability.

and this is not an attempt to knock new york city. far from it. in fact, I think new yorkers’ have done a beautiful job of compensating for these lapses in humanity by placing emphasis on creative nonverbal nods to individuality: fashion, art, political movements, music, dance, and the stories fed to us by the countless romantic comedies that take place in the big apple. (but part of me cannot help but suspect that these displays of intense individuality are just more cries into the void: “see me! notice me! I am human! I may be one of 8 million but I am unique!”)

but I digress.

rather, this entry is an attempt to explain a larger trend in our society’s development towards this default state of dehumanization. over our species’ history, we made the steady trek from small tribes of 100-200 community members in which everyone knew each others’ names to the modern day where we share towering concrete jungles with millions of other faceless inhabitants. we no longer have our small communities. our monkey brains, however, have stayed the same (because to think that our evolutionary biology has kept up with the growth of human civilization is far too optimistic for me to believe). our brains were not built to keep and maintain relationships with our 1,500 instagram followers. our brains were not built to function in communities made up of 8 million other people. our brains cannot even conceptualize what 7.7 billion people on earth looks like, let alone how to have empathy for those 7.7 billion people. despite there being more people on earth than there have ever been before, we feel more lonely than we have ever been before.

our empathy is limited by our biological facilities. if we cannot even acknowledge the humanity of the person with which we are rubbing shoulders against on the subway, how can we be expected to have empathy when we hear of a genocide where actual human lives are being taken taking place across the globe. it’s simply far too much.

I fear that we will be perpetually dissatsified by our inability to adequately express our fondness and empathy for one another. i mean, that’s ultimately what bothers us so much about the feeling of sonder. we do not have the words to articulate the loneliness we feel in our own lives nor do we know how to communicate our longing to be in communion with others. there is no point in us saying to strangers, “it’s okay. I know you exist. I know you feel the same feelings that I do. I know you experience struggles I will never be able to understand. I cannot help you nor can I do anything about it, but I want you to know that I know.” sonder will leave you only more frustrated than when you first began to contemplate the existence of others. screaming into the void does nothing when you no one is able to adequately acknowledge your humanity either. dehumanization—the act of relinquishing our ability to experience sonder—becomes a coping mechanism to avoid this tragic fate.

or not?

maybe i’m just overly sympathetic. maybe i’m wrong about this. I hope i’m wrong about this. I hope that new yorkers can rebut me with stories about how they have been able to experience enough heartwarming experiences of humanity and empathy to counteract this default state of dehumanization. that people surprise me with how much empathy and joy they can share with complete strangers. that our society operates with a love ethic to encourage social justice and good will of all populations. that we can build small communities where each person knows and cares for their neighbor. that sonder stops being such an uncomfortable feeling because we have the privilege of being in the company of one another.