Introduction

Sonder: the feeling you get when you realize that everyone around you has a life as deeply meaningful and rich as your own. Sonder is just this — you, the reader, peering into the world through a different set of eyes. Seeing how each delicate moment in your life is also occurring in someone else’s. The authors here will show you their lives in joy, in beautiful devastation, and in truth. These stories, poems, and art are a snapshot of this moment in time experienced by each and every one of us.

In truth, this word was not familiar to me until this project was created. Yet, it is an experience that I am all too familiar with. I always thought that one day I would reach the magical age where I would figure it out, that I would finally know what was going on and how to handle it. And then sonder came suddenly and rapidly. I realized that while I may not have a handle on everything, there is nothing to figure out. Everyone is trying their best in the ways they know how.

In searching for meaning in religion and poetry, I figured out that what I really was craving was connection to people, to the lives around me. The people we know and cherish are the best parts of ourselves. I get to see so many people with such real and full and beautiful lives happening alongside mine. Riley Sallee in “Cherry (Never On Top)” and Violet Hackbarth in “Ready to Return” show us that even something such as the perception of a college town can have profoundly different views, ones that also differ from mine. And while we were in this college town, Olivia Meyer in “Alien Space Cadet” and Nannette Montgomery in “When Snow Fell on the Holy Land” write about thousands of miles away, spanning countries and continents. Mae Lemm in “How do I Adult?” and Kaelyn Hvidsten in “Do You Wanna Grab Dinner?” ask earnest questions, each searching for a meaning.

While the word sonder feels so existential, I know it is what makes us humans full of love. I have had the glorious privilege of seeing the world through the eyes of the authors in this collection. We are all humans with rich and full lives. We desire to sonder.