013: to seeing beyond ourselves
Exploring how sonder and contemplation deepen empathy, nurture creativity, and help us fully inhabit and engage with the world around us.
Well, hello, dear reader. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
I’ve missed you, truly. ❤️
I’ve spent a lot of time overthinking how to find my way back here—back to words, back to sharing in this space. Yet the more I tried to write, the emptier my language felt against the weight of what the world carries, what I’m carrying, what we all continue to carry.
This past year has felt like a storm gathering on the horizon, one none of us were fully prepared for. Even the steadiest among us have been left a little unmoored. To call it turbulent or unpredictable feels too light for the depth of what it has been.
So much has been swirling inside me. Yet whenever I reached for the language to articulate it all, there was nothing.
Nothing to say, yet so much to feel.
In this time, I sought refuge both in my inner world and among close friends and peers. I asked myself many questions, complex ones that resist simple answers, including:
Why does the simple act of existing pose a threat to others?
Why do people cling to control, especially when the person, place, or thing was never theirs to claim in the first place?
Why is quietness so often mistaken for timidness or inactivity, as if it doesn’t hold its own kind of power?
I am aware of the systems and structures designed to constrict, dehumanize, and strip away our wholeness—structures that seek to keep us silent and make us forget the sacred truth of our shared humanity. Because these systems exist, we too often mistake dominance for strength, proximity for understanding, and tolerance for compassion.
We look away from pain that is not our own. In doing so, we fail, again and again, to recognize the dignity of those around us, especially those who have historically been pushed to the margins. Our very existence continues to be treated as negotiable and disposable.
And yet, even within—or perhaps because of—these failures, I believe there are alternative realities that exist. Realities where nurturing and love can, in fact, replace oppression and violence.
These realities live in the spaces we create with one another: in small acts of care, in relationships that honor complexity, in communities that choose to see the wholeness of a person rather than reducing them to their struggles, performance, or utility.
It’s here, in that deliberate act of noticing, that I find myself returning to a concept I have long held close: sonder.
01. on sonder: the art of seeing beyond ourselves
Sonder is the subtle, unspoken poetry of existence. It’s the realization that every passerby, every fleeting face in a crowd, is living a life as vivid and complex as our own. It reveals itself in a glance across a train platform, in the silent recognition between strangers caught in the same rainstorm, or in the brief nod shared by people at a grocery store who will never meet again. These small encounters are like portals, offering small glimpses into the vast narratives unfolding beyond the pages of our own stories.
In a culture obsessed with surveillance, categorization, overcorrecting, and hypervisibility, sonder offers a counterweight. It reminds us that meaning does not always need to be grasped or explained to be held in reverence.
“Being in each other’s presence is a sonder moment—two strangers, curious yet distant, held apart by the complexities of life and the space-time continuum.”
— An excerpt from an unpublished poem I wrote in January 2025
Some connections are fleeting, delicate, and immeasurable. Others are harsh and inhumane, and noticing them does not require fleeing from the discomfort.
It reminds us, too, that people can exist beautifully without permission, that their lives do not require understanding to be worthy of respect and love. Choosing to let others exist fully, without expectation and without the impulse to extract or exploit, becomes an act of radical care.
02. on contemplation: slowing down as an act of resistance
If sonder is the spark of awareness, then contemplation is the practice of tending to that spark until it illuminates something within us.
Contemplation asks us to linger in complexity and to resist the urge to look away or simplify what is uncomfortable. It offers us the spaciousness to hold many truths at once, both the beauty and the brutality of the world, and to consider how, within our own capacities and practices, we might respond before we do so.
From that place of thoughtful presence, our actions, however small, can become intentional contributions to easing the weight ourselves and others carry.
Perhaps we cannot remake the world overnight. But what if, little by little, we could shape it into something less violent, less overwhelming, and more humane by tending to these practices in our everyday lives?
What if noticing and wondering, two gestures that ask nothing but our presence, become the forms of resistance we leverage against a culture that thrives on speed, certainty, and extraction?
Take some time to consider what that may look like for you in your own life.
03. sonder and contemplation as pillars of creativity
Most of my readers here are artists in their own right. Our reasons for creating may differ, but we have all engaged in sonder and contemplation in some form or another.
For many of us, including myself, they are steady pillars of our artistic practice.
Sonder fuels our imagination, deepens our empathy, and shapes the stories we tell. Contemplation gives us space to sit with these moments, to reflect on how they make us feel, without rushing to assign meaning.
Sitting with the mystery of other lives without attempting to define or possess them opens a deeper, more abundant means of creativity. We do not need to understand every face we see. We do not need to turn every moment into material.
What matters is our willingness to witness, to wonder, and eventually, to act.
Embracing sonder and leaning into contemplation allows us to honor both the lives unfolding around us and the slow, sacred process through which our own art and shared humanity take shape.
Art is not only what we make, but also how deeply we notice.
It is how gently we treat ourselves and others.
It is how generously we allow the world to move through us, without being passive bystanders.
Until next time, peeps.