Sonder
“the strong feeling of realizing that every person you see has their own life story in which they are the most important person” – Cambridge Dictionary
Sonder is the overwhelming knowingness that every stranger and passerby is as internally complex as yourself; that everyone is driven by their own life experiences, ambitions, dreams, fears, and traumas; that – from others’ perspective – you are only a fleeting background character, just as they are to you. Sonder is something like humility, and it’s something like compassion.
This feeling of sonder is what A Bit About It attempts to invoke in its readers. Consider the fact that these storytellers are just like you, and that they have each shared only one out of countless stories from the library of their lives.
If you could tell one story, what story would you tell?
About the project
A Bit About It is a series of short stories based on documented conversations with storytellers in and around the city of Vancouver, Canada. These storytellers have been given a single cup of coffee and the simple prompt:
“Tell me a story – whatever story you’d like”.
In interviewing these storytellers, writer Alma Pearce hopes to evoke a sense of sonder, and remind her readers that every person living in this city has got a story worth telling.