The Power of a New Word: Hearing the Silence in Which Now Is Born

I just learned a new word. It’s new not only to me but to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and possibly many of us. According to the online Word Daily site, it was created by a German writer named John Koenig, as part of their book called “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows,” released in 2021. Before it was a book, it was an online website and YouTube channel. Did you know of this? The book includes a collection of words Koenig coined to express a variety of emotions, not just sorrows, but for which he thought no word existed.

 

The word is ‘sonder.’ It means “the realization and understanding that all other people have lives as complex as one’s own.” Wow; as complex, and let’s add as valuable, as painful, as full of worries and wonder. A realization that just as we ourselves have an inner world filled with contradictions, so does everyone else. We all feel and love and dream.

 

When we’re in a traffic jam, we feel sonder when we see these other people in the cars next to us and feel, wow, they’re as complex as I am. They’re rushing to work or the hospital or a lover, feeling anxiety or fear or anticipation, or all three. The word might’ve been inspired by the French ‘sonder’ meaning “to measure the depth of.” We measure the depth of those we see and hear; we measure our own depth by recognizing that of others. What great power we can unfold with such a word!

 

According to Wikipedia, Sonder is also the name of a music album by an American pop-band, and the name of an American neo-soul group. Koenig says that “most of what we feel goes unspoken for lack of a word” to realize, express, or ripen it.

 

As I get older, I feel a newly realized appreciation for words. And I guess I feel sonder towards so many of my fellow agers who, like me, are finding it more difficult to remember words we once spoke readily. Maybe this sounds like a stereotype, but it’s reality for so many of us. Words that once danced easily out of our mouths now hide and we can feel bereft over the loss. We’re left with frustration— and then silence. Yet, it’s how we respond to the silence that most effects who we are and will be.

 

Sometimes, a conversation with my wife becomes an opportunity for pantomime and guessing games. I stand up and mime partially sitting with my arms held out in front of me grasping air and ask her, “What is that word? I know it begins with a ‘b’ and it names something with 2 wheels we can ride.”

 

Each of us has our own memories, connotations that reach beyond common meanings. Likewise, every language is its own world, or embodies a different perspective on the universe, so each has words that others miss.

 

For example, according to philosopher Alan Watts in his book The Way of Zen, there are 4 words espousing a perspective unique to the Japanese language and expressing moods characteristic of Japanese poetry. Some of the words have close English approximations but with unique twists. The moods are, in Japanese, sabi, wabi, aware (a-wa-re), and yugen. Sabi is when we get quiet and feel detached from our usual concerns; we feel a quiet isolation. Poet Lucien Stryck said sabi is the recognition of beauty in asymmetry, imperfection, and the yearning to go beyond a superficial understanding.

 

Wabi is often linked with sabi. It’s a sense of simplicity, purity, and sincerity. Watts said it’s the poignant appreciation of what others call common. We catch a glimpse of the ordinary in its “incredible suchness.” The mood can arise when we feel sad or depressed and we notice the uselessness of many of our concerns. Stryck said wabi is the feeling of something previously ignored now seen as precious….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Healing Divisions, Both in Ourselves and With Others: The Brittle Weakness Exposed by Not Compromising

There’s the old, oft-repeated story, that if frogs are placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated, they will not realize the danger of eventually being boiled alive until it’s too late. However, says psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant, frogs will leap out as soon as they sense the heat. But we human beings are feeling the increasingly hotter world temperatures caused by climate change but are not leaping out and are not doing all we can to turn the heat off.

 

Maybe frogs are more intelligent than humans. Or maybe we are just too good at imagining reality as being other than it is?  At creating “alternate facts” and diversions? Or are too many of us just afraid of change? Or too traumatized?

 

How do we loosen the boundaries in ourselves? How do we let go of rigid ideas of who we are or must be or of what is real? And how do we help others do the same?

 

One of the biggest obstacles to changing anyone else’s mind, or our own, is realizing not only it can be done but it’s happening all the time. For example, before 2012, the country was opposed to gay marriage. In 2013, the majority supported it. In 2015, the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same sex marriage.

 

Another science journalist, David McRaney, in his book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, argues we evolved to work to consensus, to helpful adaptation. But it can happen in punctuated spurts, times of great argument and division and no clear change, then a sudden burst of change. Hopefully, we’re near such an evolutionary adaptation now.

 

And lately, I’ve found in myself this same resistance to facing people with rigidly held opposing ideas. It seems impossible to reach or even talk with those who disagree with me about climate change, or the “Big Lie,” for example. With the global earth and ocean temperatures rapidly reaching such high levels, the increasing number of dangerous weather events, wildfires, droughts, and floods all make climate change seem so obvious. And I saw the 1/6 attempted coup and the big lie enacted live on national tv. It just feels like what seems so clear to me should not be so hard for others to see.

 

But part of that difficulty comes from the fact that for all of us, our beliefs and even rationally constructed understandings of the world are the ground our lives stand on⎼ or appear to stand on. To question those views can feel like we’re washing away the ground under our feet; it can feel like abandoning our sense of ourselves.

 

In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,  Grant points out we often prefer the “comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.” We resist rethinking, or talking with those with different views, not only because of the time and energy required, but because it would mean questioning ourselves. Such questioning might add more unpredictability to an already unpredictable, often threatening world. We need to recognize that what we believe is not who we are. We’re a universe infinitely larger than our worst opinions. It takes courage, not only to face those with diametrically opposing beliefs, but to unlearn what we believe, or think is true.

 

Especially now, it’s become difficult to change our minds. It can even be dangerous. Politically, acts mislabeled as flip-flopping are considered by many cowardice, or a sin….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Power of a New Word: What Deepens and Clarifies Our Readiness to Feel, Hold, and Cherish Our World Can Save Us

Learning a new word can galvanize our thinking and reveal feelings and realities once deeply buried. Of course, the ability to think, speak, and write in an organized language itself does this in extraordinarily complex and diverse ways. Language becomes such an integral part of us it can filter and augment all we experience. Once conceived and developed, human languages revolutionized all of history. Maybe, in a small way, learning certain new words can also be revolutionary.

 

Just recently, I have found this to be so. Susan Murphy, in her new book A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans For Facing The Climate Crisis, gifts us with important insights and powerful new words. One such word is hyperobject, coined by philosopher Timothy Morton. The term refers to unfolding processes that are beyond the scale to which our human comprehension has evolved. The processes are almost impossible to pin down and block our normal methods for sensing and responding to danger. But are all such processes dangerous? Aren’t many healing and creative?

 

The danger posed by climate change is one such hyperobject. In our new situation today, human life in large scale societies, maybe all life, is endangered by the climate shifts and instability that we’re already experiencing; and it’s getting worse.

 

But I’d argue that the danger posed by DJT, with his cronies and devotees, is a close second. The two are arguably inter-related, as the second increases the depth of the first. And in neither case can we, nor have we as a people comprehended the danger.

 

I don’t think many of us in the U.S., maybe more so for those of us privileged by this culture, have really comprehended what life under DJT would be like. Maybe many people of color, women, LGBTQ+ and others have unfortunately an easier time imagining the oppressive possibility. They might better imagine what life would be like with such a violent person in charge who’s trying to be a dictator, who expounds hate as a political tactic and puts his own cravings and image as more important than anyone else’s life or sanity.

 

Can we imagine a government that considers truth and science as unimportant or a threat? That rips away the rights and constitutionally protected political voice of the people? That destroys the rule of law and robs all of us who are not active supporters of DJT of the legal assumption of innocence unless proved guilty?

 

But at the same time, there’s enough of the “old” world left to provide the entertainments, consumerism, distractions that helped foster the crisis we face. There’s an entire virtual world available to encourage us to hide from reality. We can see, smell, and read about damaging fires, floods, hurricanes, wars, etc., notice the shifting and diminishing animal populations and extinctions. Notice the horrors of DJT threatening judges and their children and displaying manufactured images of President Biden in chains dumped in the back of a pickup truck.

 

And then we watch tv, a movie, or sporting event or get involved in social media and everything feels “normal” again….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.