What will you do with the stories entrusted to you?

Sonder: n. 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 invisibly 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.<p>This word was popularized by the site Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and I believe it, as the opposite, hearkens back to solipsism, the philosophical idea of you being the only one to exist. It is interesting to see this word &quot;sonder&quot; not referenced at all in the article, I would have imagined it a meme within the Internet at this point.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;23536922667&#x2F;sonder" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;23536922667&#x2F;...</a>

The most important shift I’ve made in my life was when I started approaching conversations with the attitude that the other person could teach me something, no matter who it is. Sometimes it takes some digging, but I’ve found it to be true.

Hmmm I like the message but I partly disagree with some of what they are saying in regards to narrative tap out. I’ve found some things no one can truly understand some things that people go through unless they went through it themselves.<p>I’ve encountered it both ways, and theres just some things that people seem to only be able to understand on their own through experiences.<p>Opening up to other people is exhausting, they frequently either don’t know what to do or they try and act sympathetic or empathetic but eventually usually aren’t.<p>I think often about Frodo in lord of the rings. The burden he had to carry alone and how it changed him. I think many people have that one ring they carry around. You have to look at it from a Birds Eye view, the way our lives all run and are interconnected. It’s said that either someone you know directly is going through something rough or that person knows someone who’s got it rough. Thinking of that helps me be nicer and more patient with people.<p>But i think it’s foolish to expect them to be. I’ve been burned many times putting faith in people I shouldn’t. The only people who usually truly get you understand you because they went through it themselves. Of course this is just my experience, but I’ve found it keeps on ringing true as i get older and older.

<i>When someone dares to step forward and speak up, listen. Just be. It&#x27;s one of the most powerful things you can do. Hijacking conversation doesn&#x27;t create connection, it breaks it.</i><p>I might be in a minority here but I feel a huge sense of relief when someone shares an anecdote that tells me they understand what I&#x27;m going through, because they&#x27;ve been through similar things themself.<p>(I&#x27;m probably oversharing, but one of my daughters has some rather severe developmental difficulties and has threatened to kill me, my wife, and our other daughter more times than I can remember. It is oddly comforting to hear other peoples&#x27; stories and know I&#x27;m not alone).

I’m a little drunk and I have not even read the article but I was discussing this very thing with my friends. We have so many stories and we are each going through so much struggle individually. Why can’t we be kind and considerate of each other?

A hallmark of immaturity is a person who makes assumptions about how easy someone else&#x27;s life must be just because they are well off financially, have a bubbly persona, or live in a state of peace and gratitude. To be human is to suffer and at the very least to watch people you love suffer and sometimes die. I wish people would remember this, but more often they attempt to quantify the pain and create portraiture of a person they know nothing about, compare it to their own and then assume they can be bitter, resentful, or dismissive towards them.

I don&#x27;t agree with this article.<p>I do agree that everyone is living a story that you know nothing about. But I think everyone on some level is aware of this lack of knowledge about other peoples&#x27; lives. In fact I feel it&#x27;s rather obvious that even the most random person on the street lives a very complex life.<p>A call for compassion because people are &quot;unaware&quot; of the complex lives other people live is a feel good narrative that isn&#x27;t true. Everyone is fully &quot;aware.&quot;<p>The true horror of human nature is this: We are all aware of the hardships and the stories everyone else goes through. But our compassion has limits. At its most fundamental level, nobody cares about you and you don&#x27;t really care about others.

This is true.<p>But you should probably maybe ignore most of it. Because there is more shared between us than we want to admit.<p>I was talking to some guy here in Bangkok recently last night. He&#x27;s Jewish and I&#x27;m Jamaican. It turns out our lives were remarkably similar. Right down to me working in the same city he lived in 30 years ago. We were making jokes about both of our Jewish friends because we experienced the same things with them.<p>We experienced a lot of the same things too. It was very interesting having that more than hour long conversation.<p>He experienced a lot of negative things in his life. I experienced many of the same negative things in my life. We spoke about a guy on my team here from a totally different very poor South East Asian country who experienced similar things in his life too.<p>So yes, maybe the order of things, or the severity of things that happen in each of our lives are different, but most of the encounters and experiences are similar to what other people see.<p>We are not that special. We are not that unique. We eat the same things, watch the same shows, want the same things for our children.<p>The difference between now and before, is that we could put people in fewer buckets, now there are a few more buckets we can put people in. And really, if you stop to thing, not that many more buckets, since human nature sort of remains consistent regardless of the times.<p>And the sooner we understand that a white nationalist has many similar experiences to a black nationalist, the sooner we will realize, that hey, &quot;that guy is very much like me&quot;.

I have a similar philosophy (if I dare call it that): every person is living in their own world, shared by no one else.<p>What I mean is, reality is an interpretation of what we observe. Not only does everyone observe a unique combination of events from mostly unique perspectives, the unique events and experiences before an event change how current events are interpreted.<p>Two people can look at the same thing and see two different things, but build upon that and consider that no two people, from their own perspectice, live in the same world. You can find other people that share many of your perspectives but never all. No one will live in your world after you and no one has lived in it before you and no one will ever know it.<p>Thinking this way has helped me understand a lot of things. When I was younger, I couldn&#x27;t understand how some people do this and that but then as life and time changed me so that I do or say those same things, I am seeing how those people didn&#x27;t just make different decisions, they were really living in a different world.

The Narrative Takeover section is lazy thinking and lazy writing. Nearly every sentence is a claim made in thin air, devoid of practical guidance.<p>So much advice about communication is couched in the language of victimhood vs unspecified aggressions. That’s fine for memes on LinkedIn, maybe. We should expect more from someone who studies psychology for a living.<p>No one should say “It’s not about me.” It’s always, for you, about you, first. You judge yourself, position yourself, posture yourself, plan your next move, on and on relentlessly. You must do this. Even the author of this piece wrote it for her own needs, first, and expressed a philosophy that makes her feel better.<p>Conversation is an exchange. When someone points a finger at a supposed “takeover,” that in and of itself, is attempt at a takeover. EVERY utterance can be interpreted as a takeover if you choose to see it that way. Or instead of takeover you can see it differently: as energy flow. Sometimes I talk to a friend who needs me to hear him. He indicates this by talking without stopping. He hasn’t “taken over,” though. He has signaled his need and I can choose to accept it or make a counter proposal of my own need.<p>A better way to have written about this would be for the author to stop blaming people for wanting to share anecdotes and connect in that way (which IS a kind of empathizing, regardless of what she claims). Instead, simply say “if you don’t make room to hear quiet narratives from ambivalent or timid people, then you may never hear them. If you care about these people, consider how your behavior might be disabling them.” In other words, it is all about me, and I am playing a First-Person Talker game as I live my life. So if I want be safe and happy I better do things that encourage the people my happiness depends upon to open up to me.<p>That is my choice, and it is a pragmatic choice, not a moral one. No moral order requires me to self-censor my voice, because if that were true then we would have to say that anyone who ever spoke up in a conversation was committing a sin, since anyone who breaks the silence has blocked others from talking.<p>I went on a date with a woman in 1991. I talked constantly. She seemed reluctant to say anything. We were married a few weeks later. I am still married to her 31 years later. After we were married she helped me learn how to make quiet space for her to share her thoughts with me. I do this because I choose for her to be happy; because it’s all about my own safety and happiness, which comes through her.

For much of my life, I was a jerk. I was insecure and often became offended and unkind when things didn&#x27;t unfold the way I thought they should. It really screwed up my relationships and in my mid-50s, I found myself pretty much angry and alone in the world. I was constantly stuck in a story no one else really knew much about.<p>What I came to understand was that I had picked up certain ideas about myself over the course of my life. &quot;I am this&quot; and &quot;I am that.&quot; They weren&#x27;t really true, and so I was always kind of at odds with the world.<p>Over a period of years, I started to understand the situation better. I was fortunate to be able to hire a good therapist, and I worked with him for four years. I started reading about Buddhism, Advaita-Vedanta and other non-dual philosophies. I began to meditate and attend a local Buddhist temple.<p>I also listened to a lot of Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille and other spiritual teachers.<p>I also read and watched a lot of the work of Sam Harris, Robert Sapolsky, Gabor Maté and others.<p>Eventually I came to realize that my false, egoic self was just an illusion, and that I no longer needed to take anything personally. I also developed a greater sense of compassion for other people, and started to notice how they were caught in the same trap that had held me for so many decades.<p>At this time, I don&#x27;t really take things personally anymore. I&#x27;m generally at ease in the world. If this kind of stuff interests you, you might enjoy the following video:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oX1IFUDNtto" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=oX1IFUDNtto</a><p>edits: Fixed up typos and missing words a bit.

This is really apparent if you&#x27;ve ever worked in retail, specifically small stores with few customers at a time. One of the parts I loved about working at vape shop was talking to people.

&gt; Our compassion can fatigue when we consume a high volume of trauma narratives through the media<p>I have never thought about this or know if I believe it to be fully true. But it&#x27;s a fascinating perspective that, if nothing else, has some level of truth to it.<p>Definitely something I&#x27;ll ponder as I think about important, real life relationships.

Until you meet enough people and talk to them on a deep enough level and then you realise that those stories are all remarkably similar and that we&#x27;re all really experiencing the same world together.

Reminds me of David foster Wallace this is water talk.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI</a>

Anyone else picturing google, facebook, etc. employees reading this headline, loling and muttering under their breath &quot;That&#x27;s what you think Joy. How&#x27;s your [insert issue shared privately on their platform here] doing?&quot;

This seems trite. What&#x27;s more fundamental to our lives than the utter uniqueness of each individual experience?<p>Merely examining ones own life would reveal the infinite complexity within our conscious experience.

The important question is how much of the story is true. We only remember a version of events that occurred and some other witness will have a slightly different version. Ultimately, the story which we make up is entirely our own and it might be far away from the reality.

&gt; It&#x27;s possible to grow numb when inundated by stories of hardship and pain.<p>Sometimes the problem is skepticism. There are people that tell stories who I&#x27;m relatively sure are fabulists. It&#x27;s a lot of work to act engaged with a story that doesn&#x27;t ring true.

This is this human in this setting living. That is a story by itself. So call live in the moment.<p>Not all of course. We do not just live for this moment, … at least not all of us believe in …<p>Just cannot say “nothing about”. Possibly “not all about”.<p>Tb;dr<p>Too bad a title do not read la.

Such an important topic. Thanks for reminding me.

The person who stabs me in the back for $100 is the same person who stabs you in the back for $1.

Title is completely different from the actual post. This is against the guidelines.

I&#x27;m not living a story. My life is really boring.

Thank you for this.

meh. We all are born, eat, sleep, shit, fuck, then we die.<p>Everything else is just variations on that theme. You like Italian food, and this person likes Amish food, well whoop-de-doop.<p>People make a bigger deal out of Italian food or Amish food or Istanbullian food because what else are ya gonna do? I&#x27;m not saying it is good or bad, but I think I pretty much know almost everyone&#x27;s story. You&#x27;re born, you do stuff, then you die. And some will go to heaven, most to hell even though they think they&#x27;ll go to heaven, and we atheists are just going to die.<p>.<p>If you like Bill:<p>All the world’s a stage,<p>And all the men and women merely players;<p>They have their exits and their entrances,<p>And one man in his time plays many parts,<p>His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,<p>Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.<p>Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel<p>And shining morning face, creeping like snail<p>Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,<p>Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad<p>Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,<p>Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,<p>Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,<p>Seeking the bubble reputation<p>Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,<p>In fair round belly with good capon lined,<p>With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,<p>Full of wise saws and modern instances;<p>And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts<p>Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,<p>With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;<p>His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide<p>For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,<p>Turning again toward childish treble, pipes<p>And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,<p>That ends this strange eventful history,<p>Is second childishness and mere oblivion,<p>Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.<p>.<p>Or if you like your Ecclesiastes:<p>8 All things are wearisome,<p>more than one can describe;<p>the eye is not satisfied with seeing,<p>nor the ear content with hearing.<p>9 What has been will be again,<p>and what has been done will be done again;<p>there is nothing new under the sun.<p>10 Is there a case where one can say,<p>“Look, this is new”?<p>It has already existed<p>in the ages before us.<p>11 There is no remembrance<p>of those who came before,<p>and those yet to come will not be remembered<p>by those who follow after.