The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

by John Koenig

dès vu: the awareness that this moment will become a memory.

onism: the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

sonder: the realization that each random passerby is the main character of their own story, in which you are just an extra in the background.

As Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

Language is so fundamental to our perception, we’re unable to perceive the flaws built into language itself. It would be difficult to tell, for example, if our vocabulary had fallen badly out of date, and no longer described the world in which we live. We would feel only a strange ho...

In language, all things are possible. Which means that no emotion is untranslatable. No sorrow is too obscure to define. We just have to do it.

The word sadness originally meant “fullness,” from the same Latin root, satis, that also gave us sated and satisfaction. Not so long ago, to be sad meant you were filled to the brim with some intensity of experience.

And if you are lucky enough to feel sad, well, savor it while it lasts—if only because it means that you care about something in this world enough to let it under your skin.

The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour, And for me, now as then, it is too much, There is too much world. —CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ, The Separate Notebooks

chrysalism n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

trumspringa n. the longing to wander off your career track in pursuit of a simple life—tending

scabulous adj. proud of a certain scar on your body, which is like an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for your continued willingness to play with her, even if it hurts.

occhiolism n. the awareness of how fundamentally limited your senses are—noticing how little of your field of vision is ever in focus,

VEMÖDALEN the fear that originality is no longer possible

As the poet once said, “The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”

looseleft adj. feeling a sense of loss upon finishing a good book, sensing the weight of the back cover locking away the lives of characters you’ve gotten to know so well. From looseleaf, a removable sheet of paper + left, departed.

jouska n. a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a devastating comeback, a cathartic heart-to-heart—which serves as a kind of psychological batting cage that feels far more satisfying than the small-ball strategies of everyday life.

slipfast adj. longing to disappear completely; to melt into a crowd and become invisible, so you can take in the world without having to take part in it—free to wander through conversations without ever leaving footprints, free to dive deep into things without worrying about making a splash.

elsewise adj. struck by the poignant strangeness of other people’s homes, which smell and feel so different than your own—seeing the details of their private living space, noticing their little daily rituals, the way they’ve arranged their things, the framed photos of people you’ll never know. From else, other + wise, with reference to.

the Til n. the reservoir of all possible opportunities still available to you at this point in your life—all the countries you still have the energy to explore, the careers you still have the courage to pursue, the skills you still have time to develop, the relationships you still have the heart to make—like a pail of water you carry around in your head, which starts off feeling like an overwhelming burden but steadily draws down as you get older, splashing gallons over the side every time you take a step. From the till, a shopkeeper’s register filled with unspent change + until.

ASTROPHE the feeling of being stuck on Earth

licotic adj. anxiously excited to introduce a friend to something you think is amazing—a

fitzcarraldo n. a random image that becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling around in your head, itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.

exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which

la cuna n. a twinge of sadness that there’s no frontier left, that as the last explorer trudged his armies toward the last blank spot on the map, he didn’t suddenly turn for home, leaving one last island unexplored so we could set it aside as a strategic reserve of mystery.

OZURIE feeling torn between the life you want and the life you have

idlewild adj. feeling grateful to be stranded in a place where you can’t do much of anything—sitting for hours at an airport gate, the sleeper car of a train, or the backseat of a van on a long road trip—which temporarily alleviates the burden of being able to do anything at any time and frees up your brain to do whatever it wants to do, even if it’s just to flicker your eyes across the passing landscape.

aubadoir n. the otherworldly atmosphere just before 5 a.m., when the bleary melodrama of an extremely late night becomes awkwardly conflated with the industrious fluorescence of a very early morning.

mahpiohanzia n. the frustration of being unable to fly, unable to stretch out your arms and vault into the air, having finally shrugged off the burden of your own weight, which you’ve been carrying your entire life without a second thought.

the kick drop n. the moment you wake up from an immersive dream and have to abruptly recalibrate to the real world—unquitting your job, falling right back out of love, reburying your lost loved ones.

MARU MORI the heartbreaking simplicity of ordinary things Most living things don’t need to remind themselves that life is precious. They simply pass the time. An old cat can sit in the window of a bookstore, whiling away the hours as people wander through. Blinking calmly, breathing in and out, idly watching a van being unloaded across the street, without thinking too much about anything. And that’s alright. It’s not such a bad way to live. So much of life is spent this way, in ordinary time.

We need these silly little things to fill out our lives, even if they don’t mean all that much. If only to remind us that the stakes were never all that high in the first place. It’s not always life-and-death. Sometimes it’s just life—and that’s alright.

vulture shock n. the nagging sense that no matter how many days you spend exploring a foreign country, you never quite manage to step foot in it—instead floating high above the culture like a diver over a reef, too dazzled by its exotic quirks to notice its problems and complexities and banalities, while drawing from the heavy tank of assumptions that you carry on your back wherever you go.

justing n. the habit of telling yourself that just one tweak could solve all of your problems—if only you had the right haircut, if only you found the right group of friends, if only you made a little more money, if only he noticed you, if only she loved you back, if only you could find the time, if only you were confident—which leaves you feeling perpetually on the cusp of a better life, hanging around the top of the slide waiting for one little push. From just, only, simply, merely + jousting, a sport won by positioning the tip of your lance at just the right spot, at just the right second. Pronounced “juhst-ing.”

BALLAGÀRRAIDH the awareness that you are not at home in the wilderness

foreclearing n. the act of deliberately refusing to learn the scientific explanations of things out of fear that it’ll ruin the magic—turning

wildred adj. feeling the haunting solitude of extremely remote places—a clearing in the forest, a windswept field of snow, a rest area in the middle of nowhere—which makes you feel like you’ve just intruded on a conversation that had nothing to do with you, where even the gravel beneath your feet and the trees overhead are holding themselves back to a pointed, inhospitable silence. From wild + dread. Pronounced “wil-drid.”

ghough n. a hollow place in your psyche that can never be filled; a bottomless hunger for more food, more praise, more attention, more affection, more joy, more sex, more money, more hours of sunshine, more years of your life; a state of panic that everything good will be taken from you too early, which makes you want to swallow the world before it ends up swallowing you.

ringlorn adj. the wish that the modern world felt as epic as the one depicted in old stories and folktales—a

harmonoia n. an itchy sense of dread when life feels just a hint too peaceful—when everyone seems to get along suspiciously well, with an eerie stillness that makes you want to brace for the inevitable collapse, or burn it down yourself.

treachery of the common n. the fear that everyone around the world is pretty much the same—that despite our local quirks, we were all mass-produced in the same factory, built outward from the same generic homunculus, preinstalled with the same tribal compulsions and character defects—which would leave you out of options if you ever want to reinvent yourself, or seek out a better society on the other side of the globe.

funkenzwangsvorstellung n. the primal trance of watching a campfire in the dark.

zielschmerz n. the dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream, which requires you to put your true abilities out there to be tested on the open savannah, no longer protected inside the terrarium of hopes and delusions that you started up in kindergarten and kept sealed as long as you could.

ONISM the awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience

It’s a delirious madness built into all living things. Right from the beginning, each of us has to confront a certain fundamental paradox: in order to be anywhere, you have to be somewhere. You have to confine yourself to just one body, inhabiting only one place at a time. This is the only perspective you’ll ever have, the only stretch of history you’ll ever get to see for yourself. Even though you may be lucky enough to serve as a witness to the universe, you’re cursed by the knowledge that you can only scratch the surface of it.

It’s strange how little of the world you actually get to see. No matter where on Earth you happen to be standing, the horizon you see in the distance is only ever about three miles away from you, a bit less than five kilometers. Which means that at any given time, you’re barely more than an hour’s walk from a completely different world.

You may never make it to Egypt, but you’ve already built the pyramids inside your head. You might’ve only seen a few samurai movies and anime shows, but still assume you have a half-decent understanding of Japanese culture. In this way you build yourself a mental model of what lies beyond your horizon. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to fill in the blanks.

You think of all the places you’ll never have time to explore, some of which might feel like the home you never had, or like a living hell, or like walking around on another planet. You might one day be able to visit one or two or ten of these places, but you’ll never be able to shake the feeling that with every step you take, a thousand more lights will appear, and a thousand more, and a thousand more. It’s as if you’re standing in front of the departures screen in an airport, flickering over with so many exotic place names, each representing one more path you could explore or one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.

There might even be a few people peering down from a plane passing overhead, wondering to themselves what it’s like to be standing right where you’re standing, and they might even be feeling a sense of loss, knowing they’ll never have time to explore your corner of the world. But then they’ll banish the thought; they can already picture it clearly in their heads.