Sonder

" Sonder - 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 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. "

I came across this word today and it made me incredibly sad. At first I was not sure why and then it struck me that I had lost the art of engaging in conversation with a complete stranger. I shy away from new lives and keep myself safely cocooned in the familiar warmth of old relationships. There is nothing wrong with that is there? The operative word is 'safely'. Slowly and steadily I approach the forties as a confirmed introvert bordering on rather shy. I guard my time with myself like a Samurai. I have become so comfortable in my skin and with my thoughts that when friends from the long lost past meet me I'm often asked why I'm so quiet. I have changed over the years just like everyone else. Life will do that to you. I have neither complaints nor regrets about the way I've turned out. Having any would be like regretting or complaining about your only child. After all you made the choices you made and because you had some sense most of the time you recognised the unfortunate ones and didn't repeat them.

I was trying to write these past couple of days but drew a complete blank. I didn't manage to see or feel anything extraordinarily beautiful and so I remained silent. But sorrow is just as important as joy. It may not even be a sorrow emanating from a situation or person but from the absence of the same. It might be as the Portugese say- "Saudade - a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which has been lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never really return. It was once described as "the love that remains" or "the love that stays" after someone is gone." And now I would like very much to say something hilarious as I usually do but I've got nothing for you today.