Sonder

There is a window in my room that looks out over the Potomac River. Along that river runs a road, some kind of freeway that connects the District of Columbia with other places. Every night, between about 4:30 in the afternoon and 8:00 in the evening, that road is filled with cars. It's rush hour, D.C. Style. And it's completely surreal.

In each of those cars is a human being. Each of those human beings has a mind. Each of those minds has its thoughts. Those thoughts can be anything. Those thoughts can be the most hopeful fantasies, the most depraved perversions and the most dilapidated secrets. These people, these kinds, these thoughts, they all have families. They all have loves and interests. They all have memories of happy moments and sad moments. Some of those memories are similar to the memories that I have, like the first time going to the beach, or calculus class or Boy Scout camp. Some of those memories, those thoughts and frustrations are nothing like any that I had or could have or would be capable of having at any point in my life, like what it's like to be a minority of ethnicity or sexual preference or what it's like to have red hair or how enjoyable listening to Justin Bieber is.

A this point in my evening, I step back from the window, whisper "whoa" to myself and go back to eating Bon-Bons and watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. Then I start thinking again.

Regardless of how similar or dissimilar this collective cacophony of thoughts are to each other, there are common in that none of me involve me, or, depending on what your commute is, you. And this thought exercise, this process of feeling insignificant and ignored is limited to the Monday through Friday drivers of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Think about the other 6 billion people who populate the world, whom you don't know, who don't know you, whom you care next to nothing about because your life is complicated, entertaining and troubled enough as it is already, who care next to nothing about you because their life complicated, entertaining and trouble enough as it is already.

It's astonishing to consider the enormity of all this information. Personal identities, names, home addresses, work addresses, spouses, names of friends, names of enemies, names of pets, memories of losing virginity, memories of the first day of school all stored on 6 billion brains by 6 billion different people. The information on all of these brains is not completely unique, but it is distinguishable, and the ability to distinguish the various data is quite important. And, if we're lucky, our names, our appearances and our voices might make up a few bytes of this mountain of gigabyte after gigabyte of knowledge.

For some reason this realization, somehow encapsulated in the term "sounder" smacks of profundity. At least, that's how it strikes me. Holy shit, am I small. Holy shit am I insignificant. Holy shit, am I unique. Holy shit am I special. Does this mean I can still consider myself important?

But it maybe it, this feeling of realization, this feeling of insignificance and this feeling of uniqueness, maybe it should be countered with a simple "no shit." Because, really, there are 6 billion people living on this planet. And, you arrogant prick, some of them live and experience the world and form relationships and fall in love and construct narratives with themselves playing protagonist. Because they're human beings. And you do the same thing. Because you're a human being too. Why would you expect any differently? Why would it take some "whoa" moment, some profound realization to consider that human beings, regardless of who they are, where they're from or what they've been, are similar to you? Are you that lacking in compassion, in empathy?

Because I am a human being, and I have constructed a complex narrative for my existence, a story line in which I am the main character and the "good guy" and I have filled this narrative with so much information that I can barely keep track of it all. And I would prefer to think at my existence, this complex, winding narrative that I have spent so much time building, is at least a little bit important. So you can attribute any lack of compassion, any failures of empathy on my part, to that.

Of course, that excuse isn't good enough. At least, it shouldn't be...