In my previous blog, The Business of Belonging, I explored Rhodes Perry’s work—particularly as highlighted in his Forbes interview—where he describes the practice of building cultures of belonging with intentionality, humility, and courage. In that piece, Perry briefly references a word that has stayed with me since: Sonder. A word that quietly names something many of us have felt but perhaps never fully articulated.
The term Sonder originated from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, defined as the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid, complex, and full as your own. Entire worlds of memories, fears, routines, heartbreaks, hopes, responsibilities, and unseen battles—each one as intricate as our own.
It’s a word that invites us to pause.
To widen.
To soften.
Sonder and the Long Tradition of Empathy
While Koenig’s neologism feels fresh, its spirit echoes wisdom that has existed for generations. The well-known saying, “You should never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins,” attributed to various Indigenous traditions, offers a similar reminder: that understanding should always precede judgement.
Academic research on empathy reinforces this idea. Scholars like Carl Rogers, Brené Brown, and Daniel Batson have shown that when we acknowledge the inner worlds of others—even when we cannot fully enter them—we create the psychological conditions necessary for trust, safety, and belonging. Empathy becomes a bridge, not because it solves another person’s struggles, but because it recognises the humanity beneath them.
Sonder belongs in this lineage.
It names the moment we remember that others are not supporting characters in our story.
They are protagonists of their own.
Sonder as a Practice of Belonging
Belonging is relational. It relies not just on how we show up, but on how we imagine others are showing up too. When we forget that others have their own worlds to navigate, we risk building narratives that fragment community rather than strengthen it.
Think about the last time someone didn’t respond to your email.
Maybe you wondered whether you’d said something wrong.
Maybe you felt dismissed.
Maybe you felt unimportant.
Perhaps it formed a quiet, unconscious rift that lingered inside.
But perhaps—through the lens of Sonder—other possibilities emerge:
They might be caring for a sick parent.
They might be navigating anxiety that makes communication overwhelming.
They might be carrying the weight of an invisible grief.
They might simply be tired, and human.
Sonder doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour, but it does challenge the stories we tell ourselves in the absence of information. It encourages us to hold others with a generosity that mirrors the generosity we long for when we are the ones who fall short.
In workplaces, communities, and families, this shift matters.
Sonder helps us create cultures where people feel safe enough to be imperfect.
Safe enough to be complex.
Safe enough to be themselves.
And belonging grows in exactly that kind of soil.
The Impact.
Sonder reminds us that:
- People’s actions are rarely about us.
- Everyone is carrying something we cannot see.
- Belonging isn’t built through judgement, but through curiosity and care.
When we live with this awareness, our relationships change. Our leadership changes. Our communities change. And perhaps most importantly, we change—becoming more spacious, more gentle, more attuned to the inter-connectedness that has always been there.
Sonder invites us to meet others as whole worlds, not partial stories.
The Belonging Collective 