How small

How small we all are.

Flying however many thousand feet in the air, body safe within a metal contraption, I stare out over the sea of white clouds. Glimpse the acres of land below. Forested areas, desert areas, civilization with a thousand tiny little houses - as small as a play piece in Monopoly. Fly through the trailing vapors of a helpless cloud. Dream of world where you are so, so small.

A thousand tiny houses. Each one with people - with hopes and dreams and struggles and daily fears and tears and joys and happiness.

What does that dictionary of obscure sorrows call it?
Ah, yes.

sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

To their eyes, I am just a passing wink flying overhead.

How small we all are.