big city sonder

inspired by a weekend in vancouver

This past Friday morning I began an almost twelve hour journey to Canada. I rode the city bus from my apartment to the Eugene train station, boarded another bus to Portland, got on a train from Portland to Seattle, and finally took a final bus to cross the border into Canada. The destination: Vancouver.

Because of the four day weekend, I decided to make this trip up to visit my friend McKinley and spend a day skiing. Upon arrival, I ordered an Uber and rode through the city to McKinley’s apartment. I immediately noticed the amount of people roaming the streets. It has been a while since I’d been to a place where more than two million people lived. Between traveling through Portland and Seattle and driving through Vancouver, a strange feeling stirred within me, one of smallness. However, the smallness was not a depressing sentiment, but rather reassuring—I live in a world of eight billion people, and each individual has a life as complex as mine.

There’s a word for this: sonder.

By definition, sonder is “the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness.” After spending my first week back in classes caught up in my own stress and obsessive schedule, the city’s scale—and the gentle tug of sonder at my brain—steadied me with the reminder that we are all here on this spinning sphere trying to get by. There's a oneness among living beings we tend to forget, and when we are reminded by a big city, airplane view, or busy street, it's like a part of our nature is being pulled back into consciousness. We are indeed social beings who rely on connections with others more so than elevating our independence, no matter what society says.

For instance, we as humans like to think that our lives are more complex and complicated than the person next to us on the train ride. And yes, our lives are uniquely meaningful in their own ways, but to impart a superiority complex onto your personal day to day not only inhibits connections with others, it instills intense pressure to perform. Yet, many societal systems—especially in Western culture—promote and even romanticize independence as the way towards success.

I myself tend to white-knuckle through the day head held high with my back-to-back schedule, admiring the work that I do while simultaneously pushing down the urge to close my laptop and start a conversation with the person next to me. As an extrovert, I get a buzz from interaction with others; however, I have conditioned myself to put independent success first, as connection does not necessarily have numerical validation associated with it.

Sonder humbles us to move beyond the self and into the oneness of our shared aliveness.

So as McKinley and I rode up to Cypress Mountain dressed in layers of ski gear, the city shrunk beneath me, and all I could think about was the amount of buildings and rooms filled with people who have stories to tell and passions I could learn from. And personally, after spending the bulk of the past three years in a pandemic, I think humanity is craving those connections more than ever before, no matter how big or small the interactions might be.

With that, I am revamping my blog with a new focus for the year (and maybe longer) to tell the stories of strangers. I hope to capture connections made and keep a place for those sacred interactions.

I’ll start with a few from this weekend…

The kind snowboarder: rode up a lift with McKinley and me, asked where we were from, intrigued by our Tennessee roots, decided to spend the next three runs with us (even when this meant waiting for me to get-unstuck from the trees), lesson: kindness and patience go hand in hand with making new friends

The girl in the purple dress: saw her during our Saturday night out, complimented her dress, she proceeded to tell to always wear what I want no matter what other people think, I thanked her, turns out it was her birthday, lesson: wearing what you love is beautiful, speaking your truth is even more beautiful

The dedicated barista: took my matcha latte order in Seattle, crooked yet charming smile, overheard him telling a story…he made “the perfect cappuccino” excitedly anticipating the customer’s reaction only to watch his face remain the same, lesson: someone’s masterpiece is another person’s ordinary… find the extraordinary in the ordinary

And that is all for now. A major thank you to McKinley for hosting me this weekend. Your apartment is so lovely, and your soul is even more lovely. Also, shoutout to Carrigan, Emma, Zara, Sarah, and Priya for being so sweet and quickly going from strangers to friends. I’ll have to visit again. <3

Xoxo,

Chloé Evlyn