You may be wondering what sonder means – a good question considering it’s kind of a made-up word. According to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, it means

“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.“

While it can be thought of as a sorrow, we like to think of it as a grounding belief, a whisper of possibility, and a magical approach to our work in the civic sphere.

A grounding belief: We believe that the feeling of sonder is a universal truth, that all human beings can recognize that their experience as a dynamic individual living a full life is one that all others experience.

A whisper of possibility: First, sonder. Next, empathy. And with empathy, beautiful things can happen.

A magical approach: Our efforts are rooted in the idea that our civic space is not currently designed to cultivate human connection, and that civic dialogue lacks the nuance and patience needed to understand the complexities of how our built environments impact our lived experiences. By centering the concept of sonder in our work, we hope to nudge groups to cultivate communities of neighborly agency.

We are grateful to our creative designer, Beryl Kwok, who took the concept of sonder and made it into a beautiful, meaningful logo. Think of the two parts of the “S” as an aerial view of two people walking down the street, almost…but not quite…connecting, as they move about their days.