There Must Be A Word for That
On opting out of the endless scroll
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a multimedia project by author John Koenig that, in his own words, aims to fill holes in the English language by giving name to emotions that we all feel but don’t have a word for1.
Some of my favorite words in the dictionary2:
aftersome adj. — astonished to think back on the bizarre sequence of accidents that brought you to where you are today—as if you’d spent years bouncing down a Plinko pegboard, passing through a million harmless decision points, any one of which might’ve changed everything—which makes your long and winding path feel fated from the start, yet so unlikely as to be virtually impossible.
occhiolism n. — the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.
liberosis n. — the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
trumspringa n. — the temptation to step off your career track and become a shepherd in the mountains, following your flock between pastures with a sheepdog and a rifle, watching storms at dusk from the doorway of a small cabin, just the kind of hypnotic diversion that allows your thoughts to make a break for it and wander back to their cubicles in the city.3
My favorite word from this collection, and perhaps the one that’s entered the actual language more than any of the others, is sonder. Sonder is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Sonder is the feeling of your mind’s eye zooming out—way, way out—to remind you that we are all our own protagonist.
I was struck with a feeling of sonder recently on a flight to New York. I made a point of not doing anything on the flight other than listen to a podcast, so instead of looking at my phone screen, I spent a chunk of the flight looking out the window4. As we descended into Queens I began to see the outlines of skyscrapers and then houses and parks and bridges and then cars and caught a glimpse of a few other planes lining up in the sky to land. And in each building, house, car, plane there were people with dreams, with biases, with a most embarrassing moment, with a favorite joke.
It was a good reminder of our shared humanity, which I know I really need.
But sonder can be a dangerous feeling in these days of easy access to so many people we once knew.
One of the promises of social media back in simpler times was the ability to stay connected with all our old friends5. It was so easy to share jokes with friends from high school or summer camp, it was so easy to connect with someone from a class with a click. And for an extrovert like me, the promise of never having to let a friendship fade as we all went our separate ways seemed ideal6.
But somewhere along the way, friendship became passive. Rather than working to maintain important relationships, it became easier to keep tabs on casual friends from past chapters of your life7.
And so I’m trying to opt out of this. It’s overloading my brain. I want the ability to just wonder how someone is doing and then let that feeling pass. I want actual friendship to be more work. I want to be more comfortable letting certain friendships fade into a memory. Most people we meet will only intersect with our lives for a finite period and then retreat back into the background, and I think that’s what our brains were designed for.
In that spirit, I’d like to invent my own word for the realization that not all friendships will last a lifetime. And that even with the knowledge that everyone around me has a a lot going on, I will never, ever be able to keep up with all of it… and it’s causing more harm than good to even try.
Three good songs:
Who’s Making Love by The Blues Brothers—Happy SNL 50th to all who observe.
I Love Hot Nights by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers—It’s so cold in Maine, you guys.
Word Up by Cameo—this song is just kind of undeniable lately.
The dictionary was published in 2021 and I really ought to get my hands on a copy. It’s also a blog and a YouTube page.
All the definitions taken directly from the dictionary.
Incidentally, the German language is quite good at this. They have a word for people who lack courage—shattenparker—which literally translates to “a person who parks in the shade.”
For most of the flight we were completely above the clouds and I could just make out the curvature of the earth and see where the blue sky gets a bit darker. To put it bluntly, my flight from Portland to LaGuardia brought me to outer space. I don’t care what the official definition of space is… I was in space. How are we not all talking about the miracle of human flight all the time?
Well, as old a friend as a freshman in college can have.
We could share Anchorman quotes on each others Facebook walls forever.
Or worse, we get invested in the lives of people we don’t know.