Sonder

    I got off the train downtown in a mass of people and was minding my own business when I saw something that’s still got me upset twenty minutes later. It was a small thing, not ugly or dangerous, not in any way an outrage. That’s not the kind of upset I’m talking about.

    It was a kid — well, a young man. Anyway, it was a college-aged guy, big, muscle-bound, wearing the kind of gym-shorts-and-hoodie outfit that has become de rigeur for a certain kind of teenager these days. You’ve seen guys like him getting drunk at the beach, or making too much noise in a movie theatre, or grab-assing around at the gym when you’re trying to play basketball. But he had his hood up, covering his hair and ears, with the drawstring pulled tight so that it concealed as much of his face as possible. He looked determinedly at a spot not far in front of his feet, and had his shoulders clenched, as though he thought he might be able to hide behind them. There were tears streaming down his face.

    I have no idea who this kid is, or what would have brought him to be weeping on the sidewalk as pedestrians streamed past him on their way to work or class. He clearly didn’t want to be seen by all these people, and he wouldn’t have been crying if he could help it — that much you could tell by his body language. But what was wrong? What could possibly be so wrong on a Tuesday morning?

    A whooshing sonder passed over me as I realized the incomprehensible vastness of his life, and the fact that I was just someone passing through it, the first stranger he saw that morning that he had his heart broken, or heard his mother had died, or his cat got out and ran off, or any of a whole smorgasbord of cataclysms that could have caused him to be in that place at that time, doing what he was doing. What I really wanted was to be able to stop and tell him it was going to be okay, that whatever was troubling him would pass. But of course I couldn’t do that, because I had no idea if it was true.

    Sometimes I think about my own capacity for indifference. Many times in my life I’ve happened upon an emergency and turned away. The most haunting was one time when I was walking late at night through an industrial area in North Portland with a friend of mine, and we heard a woman scream — not a you-spilled-icewater-on-me scream, but the real, jagged, completely immediate cry of someone who is in deep trouble. That night, my friend and I looked at one another, and then we walked away. Whatever was happening to that woman continued to happen.

    Was this moment like that one? I guess not, the more I think about it; I think part of what was so upsetting about this kid’s distress was how obviously embarrassed he was to be out in public with it. If I had stopped to ask him what was wrong I just would have made it worse. I can’t imagine being in his situation and wanting some stranger twice my age asking me if I’m all right. It would, among other things, be humiliating. I can only hope that he’s been able to find someplace where we aren’t all looking at him by now.