Alexander Aktén

On one of my recent trips, I got a feeling that I've felt a couple of times before. It was a Friday night in Leuven, a university town in Belgium. We were nearing the end of our 10-day bike trip through the Netherlands, and had just sat down outside at a restaurant in the city center. At the table next to us, a group of friends were having beers and joking in Dutch. They looked about my age, probably students at the local university. One of the guys closest to me said something that made the whole table laugh. And that’s when the feeling hit. If I describe it, I would say it was like a combination of sadness and FOMO, almost regret. I remember the thought that triggered it, something along the lines of: I will never understand or be part of their inside jokes. Looking around, I became much more aware of my surroundings; the tables at the restaurant were filled with people talking, the square was full of people hanging out, going places. Distant conversations everywhere. I'd already heard of sonder before, the realization that everyone else’s lives are as complex as our own. There was a hint of sonder that I was feeling, but this was another layer on top of that. It’s not that I wanted to live their experiences — no, somehow I wanted to be each of those people. To see things from their perspectives and live not just one, but all of their memories. Grow up in the neighborhoods that they did, eat the same foods they ate, live the same routines. It was almost frustrating that I wouldn't be able to. Distracted from my own conversation with my travel companion (my mom), I sat there with the overwhelming feeling of the complexity of all human lives. The thought that there are countless experiences I will never know, both going back in history and in the future... I felt a kind of longing at not being able to live all of those realities. So many memories, inaccessible. I researched a bit and found that I wasn't alone in this feeling. Apparently there is even a word for it: onism. It describes the awareness of how little of the world we'll experience and the ache of being confined to one body, place, and lifetime. The thing is, it's not like I want to actually change places with anyone else. I'm perfectly happy where I am. But still, I couldn't shake the slightly painful thought of knowing that in our lives, we can only ever live our own. Walking back to the hotel though, I got a new sense of appreciation for all my own memories and inside jokes I share with friends and family — moments only accessible to me and the people closest to me. I like the idea that we're all just carrying around our own little worlds that only we can peek into. Only we can understand the full context. And maybe that's the beauty of life, that each of us lives a story no one else can repeat.

Apparently there is a word for this feeling