Invisible significance
On “Sonder”, prog-metal, and the unknowable impact of our work.
In 2009, liberal arts student John Koenig created a blog called “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”, where he invented new words to capture emotions that had nothing suitable to describe them. One of those words was Sonder - "the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own".
Words like Sonder stuck with me ever since. John’s words seem to fill a hole in the language and give sound to a feeling I’d never thought to express. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Sonder has inspired video games, company names, and everything from indie-pop to prog-metal albums. (Check Wikipedia for a more comprehensive list of Sonder-inspired work.)
Koenig probably didn’t expect his niche poetry blog to have such a wide impact, and to still be having one almost 15 years later.
This has been on my mind since starting this newsletter. Don’t worry, I haven’t gained a massive ego. I’m not suggesting my words have any impact on anyone, and definitely nothing as significant as Koenig’s work.
What I’ve been thinking about is the expression posting into the void.
There is so much creative work being put out into the world. There’s a tough competition for attention. This is something which has stopped me from creating openly in the past — because who cares? Why should anyone stop to read what I have to say? There are already millions of blogs, newsletters, and podcasts out there. Why add one more? Without an audience, I’m just posting into the dark void of the internet, launching off words that go unread and unseen.
The thing that got me to start writing is realising that I don’t have to care who reads this. The act of consistently writing and hitting publish is what matters. I enjoy the act of writing and that’s enough. If someone does read this and it does inspire them to take a specific action, or have a new thought, that’s truly amazing and an honour - but the real catch is that I probably won’t even know.
Don’t get me wrong — there is occasionally a sign of external impact — a friend who reaches out based on what I’ve written, a heartfelt comment or a like from a reader. When that happens, I’m very grateful! It’s a wonderful feeling to connect with someone just because of what I wrote, and because they were interested enough to read it.
But ultimately, none of us have any real visibility or control on the impact of our work. When Koenig coined the term Sonder, he probably wasn’t thinking of the impact he’d have on the prog-metal scene ten years later.
Forgive me for waxing poetic but this is why I have replaced the mental imagery of posting into the void with the idea of sending a message in a bottle. My focus is on packaging up a little parcel of my work and sending it out there. I can’t control who picks it up or what they take from it.
This doesn’t just apply to creating online, it applies to everything. We don’t act kind or do things we believe are good or important only if we know we’re going to get immediate, positive feedback on their impact. We don’t do them for engagement, we do them because we care about them. We do them because they make us feel something, or they make others feel something. The impact our work has on others is mostly invisible to us, but we do it anyway, because it still feels significant and necessary in some way.
My mother, working in respite foster care and offering temporary care to young children, often doubts the impact she is making on the kids in her care. What difference can she make to these young and troubled children that she looks after, in just the few days of calm and kindness she can offer before they move on? If you’re like me, just reading this you’d wager “a whole damn lot”. It is an invisible significance more than she will ever know.
This weeks article is a reminder to myself, and to anyone who may or may not be reading. Go out and do the things you want to do. Do them for the sake of it, for yourself, and for the invisible significance you might have by doing them. Even if you feel it’s been done before, do things because it’s significant to you. Who knows, it might be significant for others too.
See you next week.
-Mike.
✍️ Quote of the week
There’s a really important thing that sometimes nervous people like me don’t realize—that the expression “to make a decision” is perfectly accurate: a decision is something you create. There’s an inclination to think that with enough research and thinking and conversation and information, it’s possible to determine what the correctdecision is; to think that decision making is an intellectual puzzle. But generally it’s not. You make decisions. Something is created when you make a decision. It’s an act of will, not an act of thought.
— Mandy Brown, from A Working Library
💎 3 Highlights from around the web this week
📝 The Musk Algorithm by DHH. I strongly dislike Musk but this is exactly why I found this hot-take interesting: “You can absolutely learn from people you wouldn't want to be.”
🎙️ Colin and Samir’s interview with Max Fosh, the silliest YouTuber. Love how Max talks about dealing with not letting your ideas define you and dealing with being “that guy” to people.
📝 Ten weird things you can buy online and why you would. Stealing this one from Tom Scott’s newsletter. A fun article, and I love the idea of April Cools.