The Etymology
The word that names what you already know.
You are sitting at a stoplight. A car turns left in front of you. Inside, someone is singing along to a song, mouth moving to lyrics you cannot hear. Behind them, a woman stares ahead, clearly lost in thought—maybe rehearsing a difficult conversation, maybe replaying one. Then a man arguing on the phone, gesturing with his free hand.
A little parade of strangers. Each one the main character of a movie you will never see.
That feeling has a name. It is called Sonder.
It is the realization—sudden, vertiginous, humbling—that every person you pass on the street, every face in a crowd, every name in a database, is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
They have their own worries that keep them awake at 3 AM. Their own embarrassing memories that make them cringe in the shower. Their own private victories. Their own quiet griefs.
You are the protagonist. So is everyone else.
In 2009, a writer named John Koenig started a project called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows—a compendium of invented words for emotions that had no name.
Sonder became its most famous entry.
Sonder (n.)
The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
The word itself is a small piece of etymology. It draws from the French sonder, meaning 'to plumb the depths'—like sailors sounding the ocean floor to measure how far down it goes. A pleasing folk etymology suggests a blend of 'sound' and 'wonder.'
Koenig recalls first thinking of it at a stoplight late at night, watching that little parade of strangers turning left. He almost did not post it.
The word took on a life of its own. It spread through the internet, then into real conversation. In 2021, Simon & Schuster published the book.
As Koenig noted: 'There is no stranger feeling than making up a word and then seeing it take on a mind of its own.'
Sonder is a humbling emotion. It punctures the narcissism of daily life—the comfortable delusion that we are the only camera in the room.
But here is the thing: experiencing sonder is not enough.
You can realize that the barista has a rich inner life. You can acknowledge that your coworker is fighting battles you know nothing about. You can see every face in the subway car as a novel you will never read.
And then? You go back to scrolling.
Sonder is a recognition. But recognition without action fades. The feeling passes, and we return to treating people as background characters—extras in a film we are directing alone.
The question becomes: how do you act on sonder? How do you move from recognizing someone's depth to actually touching it?
This is where SonderSync gets its name.
Sonder is the realization that others have rich inner worlds.
Sync is the moment you actually connect with that world.
Recognition without connection is just loneliness with extra steps.
A sync happens when someone shares a jagged truth about themselves—a fear, a hope, a failure—and you realize: Me too.
That moment of mutual recognition is the opposite of loneliness. It is being known. And it is what we are built for.
SonderSync exists to engineer those moments. Not by forcing intimacy—you cannot manufacture authenticity—but by providing the structure, the context, and the questions that lower the barrier.
We give you a system to move from 'I know you exist' to 'I know you.'