The realization that there aren't any main characters in the world and everyone has a complex life, thoughts, crushes, relatives, dreams and mind just as your own.

Essentially whilst you're the main character in your life, you're also a background character in someone else's.
The knowledge that both I and you reading this are actual people like the remaining 8 billion of us is making sonder hit me like a truck.
by B O I B O I March 7, 2022
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Sonder is the realization that everybody around you, even strangers, are living a life just as complex as yours. Sometimes your hurting so bad and you feel your the only one. But after all your hardships you start to realize that everybody is so unique and you aren't the only one. Everybody lives are so indescribably different and there is no way you will ever understand their lives. To sum it up you are realizing that your not the only one living with such chaos and complexity. All people lives are unique, strange, chaotic, and complex, just like yours. Your not alone.
I lay in bed so deep in my thoughts, the darkness was all around me while, slowly, the sonder started to kick in. I then realized that not only me, but all seven point fifty three billion people in this world which they are constantly living despite my personal lack of awareness of it.
by _i_found_it_mom_ July 29, 2019
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Briefly, "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own." Originally from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which has a lot more beautiful neologism definitions like this you might enjoy.
I felt deep sonder thinking about the all the people who looked up this word along with me.
by rednos January 10, 2013
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the realization that each passerby is living a life as complex as your own.

origin: unknown
"i often sonder about the strangers walking past the coffee shop"
by aImondmiIk June 21, 2019
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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 invisibility 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.
The sonder of it all
by franzimash October 29, 2020
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Sonder is realizing that you aren't the main character of the world, and that others have a life just like yours.
by StayedNateman February 25, 2022
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The realization that everyone around you has a life outside of yours, complete with their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You could potentially be just a passing figure on the street to them.
Sam and I were sondering down the street one day.
by shrek's Wife November 20, 2012
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