To Have More Freedom, Learn to Sonder
Not sondering we can easily drift into misery because we are in conflict with Reality.
When we studied Bonds That Make Us Free by Terry Warner, we learned how a meaningless and unhappy life stems partly from an I-It mindset—seeing others as objects valued only by what they do for us. Our most important relationships are at risk if we let that mindset control how we engage with the world.
When we see others as its, we are blind to their hopes and dreams that are as valuable to them as ours are to us. How often are we like the new father Warner described who pretends to sleep to prioritize his own rest over his wife's needs?
Warner, drawing on Martin Buber's philosophy, pinpoints a problem causing widespread suffering. Warner offers the perspective we need to correct our thinking when we are sure we are seeing the world objectively and our judgments are justified.
What's stopping us from changing our perspective?
David K. Reynolds suggests that we may be waiting passively for a pivotal moment to change our mindset and behavior:
Perhaps if you watch enough television and cinema you will begin to believe that at any moment of your everyday life some startling event will take place. The odds are against it. So you would do well to refine the routines of your everyday life so that satisfaction is maximized. Don't wait for good fortune or disaster to strike you. Use this moment well.
One wonders whether our habit of doomscrolling on our phones is feeding a yearning for a pivotal event to shift us out of our doldrums.
In his book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig introduces sonder as a state of “awareness that everyone has a story” and also an action of becoming aware or wondering about the lived experience of another. Sonder and sondering inject new life into our previous studies and point us forward to our upcoming study of Constructive Living. Reynolds is one of the authors we will be reading in those sessions.
Reynolds asks, “Can you imagine yourself without your family, friends, workplace, living space, your senses, your memories, and your body? It is the boundaries that shape and define us. We carve ourselves out of Reality.” It is our “bonds” that free us from what ails us.
So why, as Warner observed, is seeing others as its so commonplace? How can we experience more moments of sonder?