by Jack Joseph

 

Sonder (n): the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, populated by their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, inside jokes, and stories. In addition, you play the part of a background character just as they do to you. Perhaps yours is the car next to theirs when sitting in traffic or it’s your lamp that lights a window across the street from their home. Maybe you’re the person that wrote and posted something that he or she read and enjoyed.

 

Words are pretty cool, but let’s start with the basics.

 

I’ve got a brain (I mean, we all do).

 

I’ve got a pen. And it’s got some ink.

Put ’em together and what do you get?

These simple pieces add up to a complex system.

The answer to this equation is more than the sum of its parts ’cause what I say and what I do can, nay, will change the world.

 

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

 

I decide my own fate, so Mister Gorbachev, you will tear down that wall because any words that I say carry weight like an ant carrying a burden because I will prove that there is more than meets the eye.

 

The magnitude of my world rests on my shoulders but it is not the strength of my back that holds it together, it is the strength of my words.

 

I believe in honesty. I say what I mean and I mean what I say.

‘Cause at the end of the day,

the truth keeps your demons at bay,

and like Monet,

I can communiqué

my own disarray

or my right of way.

 

It is not necessary to agree with what I say.

No, it is only necessary to understand why I say it.

 

My pen and my tongue are the only ways I can convey what goes on up here.

Actions can never speak louder than words because the pen is mightier than the sword.

 

Words only have the power to impress the mind because of the reality and truth that I give them.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go, so I put my being into the words I say so that you might glimpse a piece of who I am.

 

We live our entire lives stuck in our heads and it might get a little stuffy if you don’t open a window.

In life, it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart, so let me give you a piece of my heart. I’ll not wear it on my sleeve; I’ll write it down on paper.

 

I don’t care what you think, just as long as you see me as a human being.

Like you, I live a life that is vivid and complex.

I have my own ambitions.

I have secrets that I’ll take to the grave and love that is too complicated to explain.

I’m lucky to have the friends that I do,

though I know if I only stopped to chat with a background character in my life I’d find another human being.

 

A person’s a person no matter how small and our words… our words are the biggest tools we have to see that.

 

We may just be a bunch of people on a rock hurtling through space,

but with our words we can bridge the gap that separates us from each other.