Want to Play a Game?

July 24th, 2025 by Kelly Kienzle

Do you think you over-think too often?  Or maybe you feel you live too much of your life in your head?  Do you wish you could step outside, for just one minute, from the one hundred micro-decisions you make each day?

Or are you like me and sometimes get just boringly bored by the same loop of worries and thought habits that scroll through your brain each day?

Sondering

If so, here’s a game to play.  The game is based on “sonder”, a word created only a few years ago by John Koenig.  (I created the game today.)  Sonder is “the realization that every person you pass is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”

Sonder is about relaxing our tight grip on our lives to allow ourselves to see or imagine the rich, technicolor details of others’ lives.

4 Little Steps

Here’s how you play the game:

1. Notice when you want to take a brain holiday and at least briefly dim the spotlight on your brain.
2. Look around you and notice someone, anyone. If you’re alone, consider someone in a nearby office or home or car.
3. Imagine how their life is as vivid and complex as your own. Their life has the same richness of thrills, desperations, victories, near-misses, and complicated emotions as your own. See their lives in as much detail as you can imagine.
4. Now let out your breath and recognize that if they can still find joy and peace in small minutes, so can you.

Sometimes stepping outside of ourselves helps us stay rooted inside ourselves.  Enjoy the game and bon voyage, sonder-ers!