We were in our early 20s, me and a friend who’d become a flatmate, and one memorable night we stood on our apartment’s balcony, and looked at the freeway
traffic in the distance.

What we saw was nothing unusual. You’ve seen it many times — thousands of vehicles, a
river of white headlights coming closer, and red taillights into the distance. You couldn’t distinguish
individual headlights and taillights, only blurs and colors.

On that particular night, though, we noticed it, thought about it, and we were awestruck. Every pair of those white or red dots
was a car, maybe a truck or a bus … and inside each of those vehicles was at
least a driver, perhaps passengers … and inside each of those humans
were plans and disappointments, dreams and mourning, and a billion memories, happy and
sad.No marijuana was involved. Me and my buddy were just a couple of guys who enjoyed heavy thinking, and what we were thinking that night, what I’m thinking now, is this:

There are so many people, some near, but most so far away we’ll never know anything about their lives. And each and all of them have their own history and worries and issues that are enormous to them — billions of people, with infinite daydreams and drama and problems you and I know nothing about, and never will.It blew our minds, as the kids say these days, and I’ve recently learned that there’s a word that comes close to capturing this: ‘sonder’: “the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.”
It still blows my mind. We share the world with billions of other people, and each of them (unless they’re rich) has a life that’s complicated and difficult. When they die, same as when you die, the chemistry of their bodies will return to the soil, the sky, the universe. Their problems will be finished, same as yours, and they’ll begin to be forgotten, same as you, same as all of us.We are of no consequence to those who follow into
the future, same as individuals from a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years ago are of no consequence to you and I. Our hopes and hassles and heartbreak are only for a moment, until they’re swept away by death.
The last time I said some of this to someone, they told me it’s a terribly sad perspective, and I need to drink
less, or drink more, or see a counselor.They didn’t understand. None of this is sad — it’s beautiful. It’s brilliant. We live, we fuck things up, maybe we get a few things right, but it doesn’t matter outside our own heads and very brief lives.We have a few laughs, and then we die, we’re gone, and everything starts again. And all of us, in the past, the present, the future, are dots on some highway, until the lights flicker out.

7/23/2020  
Republished 4/18/2024