The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

1. Naming Obscure Emotions Helps Us Feel Less Alone

It’s a calming thing, to learn there’s a word for something you’ve felt all your life but didn’t know was shared by anyone else.

Shared human experience. The book posits that many feelings we perceive as unique or strange are actually universal, just unnamed. Giving these obscure sorrows and joys a name validates the experience and reminds us we are not isolated in our internal worlds. This act of naming transforms a private ache into a shared human condition.

Expanding emotional vocabulary. Just as languages have words for specific cultural concepts (like hygge or saudade), we can create new words to articulate the subtle nuances of feeling. This expanded lexicon allows for a richer understanding and communication of our inner lives, filling the "huge blind spot in the language of emotion."

Examples of named feelings:

• Kenopsia: the eeriness of an empty place that is usually busy.
• Sonder: realizing every passerby has a life as complex as your own.
• Énouement: the bittersweetness of knowing the future but unable to tell your past self.
• Onism: frustration of being stuck in one body, one place.

2. Language Limits Our Perception of Reality

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

Language shapes thought. The words we inherit and use act as a form of psychological programming, shaping how we perceive relationships, memory, and reality itself. If our vocabulary is outdated or incomplete, we may feel a "strange hollowness in our conversations," unable to fully grasp or convey our experience.

Blind spots in lexicon. Current language is biased towards naming simple, tangible, and communal concepts, leaving a deficit in articulating complex, internal, and subtle emotions. We have extensive vocabularies for the external world but lack the words for the "delectable subtleties of the human experience."

The need for new words. To truly understand ourselves and the world, we must actively expand our linguistic framework. By stitching together fragments of languages or inventing new terms, we can attempt to capture the "faintest quirks of the human condition," believing that no sorrow is too obscure to define.

3. We Are Often Blind to the Fullness of Others' Lives

Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Sonder's revelation. The core idea of sonder highlights our tendency to see others as mere extras in our own story. This realization is a powerful shift in perspective, acknowledging that every random person carries the same weight of ambitions, mistakes, and relationships as we do.

Hidden inner worlds. People present only a sample of who they are, tailored to specific contexts. We rarely see the "raw feed of another human existence," with all its messiness, solitude, and internal contradictions. This leads to feelings like gnossienne, the awareness that even those we know well have mysterious inner lives we can never fully access.

Limited perspective:

• We see others from the side they choose to show.
• We are unaware of their backstories, secrets, and parallel relationships (amicy).
• Our mental images of others can become wildly outdated (lookaback).
• We struggle to understand another's pain (dolorblindness).

4. The Inner Self is a Complex and Mysterious Landscape

You alone manage this particular storehouse of memories, being the only one to remember certain things, or the only one to forget.

Internal wilderness. Our soul is described as a "dark forest," with our known self being just a small clearing. This suggests that much of who we are remains hidden, even from ourselves, comprising secret flaws, hidden talents, traumas, and unmentioned dreams (keep).

Self-perception challenges. We often don't know how we truly feel about something (agnosthesia), forcing us to analyze our own behavior as if we were a stranger. We may feel like a caricature of ourselves (typifice) or fear that we are merely products of our circumstances (vaucasy).

The struggle for identity:

• Anxiety of not knowing the "real you" (anoscetia).
• Feeling trapped inside subjective tastes (aesthosis).
• Questioning if we are able to change (alazia).
• The desire to care less about things (liberosis).

5. Time Moves Unevenly and Shapes Our Experience

Even though it feels like you’re holding still, time is sweeping past you, right where you sit.

Zenosyne's acceleration. The feeling that time is speeding up is a common human experience, particularly as we age. Childhood summers felt eternal, but years now seem to pass in a blur, as if each year is "worth a little less than the last."

Memory's fluidity. Memories are not fixed but change meaning over time (klexos). What felt like a failure can become a shrewd investment, a villain relatable, or a golden age darker. Yet, we also struggle to remember sense memories of the departed (amentalio) or convey powerful memories to others (aulasy).

Temporal disorientation:

• Echthesia: internal sense of time doesn't match the calendar.
• Dès vu: awareness that the present moment is becoming a memory.
• Keyframe: innocuous moments that mark major life shifts.
• Anemoia: nostalgia for a time you never experienced.

6. We Long for Connection While Grappling with Individuality

Strange how strange it is that you’re born alone and die alone.

The anxiety of the individual. Being an individual feels like being "tossed overboard," adrift in a sea of billions. We are the sole carriers of our bodies, names, and unique storehouses of memories (ioche), creating a perpetual tension between following the crowd and breaking out on our own.

Seeking shelter in others. Despite our individuality, we crave connection. This can manifest as the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering without being fully in it (midding), finding resonant connection with distant artists (moledro), or the atmosphere of camaraderie when stuck together (lockheartedness).

Navigating relationships:

• The ambiguous intensity of eye contact (opia).
• Fear that a partner is changing (feresy).
• The mystery of what goes on behind the scenes of social life (amicy).
• The quiet poignance of responsibility for someone (hubilance).

7. Ordinary Moments Hold Hidden Significance

So much of it is barely worth noting.

Maru Mori's lesson. The heartbreaking simplicity of ordinary things is often overlooked in the pursuit of grand struggles or epiphanies. Yet, these mundane details—the rattle of a fan, toothbrushes by the sink, the smell of dishes—are the true fabric of life, the artifacts future generations will seek to understand us.

Hidden brilliance. Artistry and meaning are often hiding in plain sight (silience), waiting to be noticed. From background music to architectural details, the world is filled with brilliance that goes unseen because we are too busy or indifferent to look up.

Finding meaning in the mundane:

• Chrysalism: tranquility indoors during a thunderstorm.
• Plata rasa: peace from the sound of a running dishwasher.
• Merrenness: lulling isolation of driving late at night.
• Lisolia: satisfaction of things worn down by time.

8. The World is Full of Unknowable Mysteries

There’s something unsettling about the idea of a black hole.

Event horizons. We are surrounded by thresholds beyond which knowledge is inaccessible, from the bottom of the ocean to the vastness of the cosmos (galagog). This inherent unknowability (chthosis) can be unsettling, reminding us how little we truly understand about the universe and our place in it.

Uncertainty and vulnerability. The awareness of unknown unknowns extends to our daily lives. People vanish without a trace, systems can be hacked, and the integrity of structures we rely on is often assumed. This leaves us feeling vulnerable to forces we cannot control, like "treading water in the deep end" (nilous).

Longing for clarity vs. mystery:

• Lachesism: longing for disaster to bring clarity.
• Yráth: hunger for mystery in a time of easy answers.
• Achenia: maddening sense that the world is too complex to understand.
• Aimonomia: fear that naming something will ruin its mystery.

9. We Are Constantly Navigating the Tension Between What Is and What Could Be

Life as it is or life as it could be?

Oz vs. Kansas. This central metaphor describes the feeling of being torn between the life you have (Kansas, ordinary, black and white) and the life you want (Oz, vibrant, full of potential). This tension creates a "maddening state," where we feel caught between accepting humble beauty and chasing a Technicolor riot.

The Til's burden. We carry a reservoir of all possible opportunities (the Til), which feels overwhelming when young but diminishes with age. This awareness of paths not taken fuels feelings like onism (frustration of limited experience) and astrophe (feeling stuck on Earth).

Desire for escape or change:

• Trumspringa: longing for a simple life away from career track.
• Slipfast: longing to disappear and observe without participating.
• Mahpiohanzia: frustration of being unable to fly.
• Alazia: fear of being unable to change.

10. Endings Are Inevitable, Yet We Still Seek to Capture Moments

Even right at the start of things, you can feel the sense of an ending.

Tiris' bittersweetness. The awareness that all things are transient is a fundamental aspect of life. From relationships to objects to entire civilizations, everything is perishable. This knowledge infuses experiences with a bittersweet quality, making us appreciate them more intensely while also feeling the pang of their eventual loss.

Morii's impulse. The desire to capture fleeting experiences with a camera or other means is a powerful instinct. We try to lend credibility to moments, prove "I was here," and convert transient flashes into something that will last. This is an attempt to "press Pause on your life," even knowing that moments will eventually get away.

Facing conclusions:

• Énouement: bittersweetness of knowing how things turn out in the future.
• Epistrix: disconcerting cluster of endings happening at once.
• Solla, solla, solla: incantation to celebrate loss and relinquish the past.
• Olēka: awareness of how few days are truly memorable.

11. We Are Haunted by the Past and Anxious About the Future

You can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going.

Rowing backward. Life feels like rowing a boat: we face the past, seeing where we've been, while a younger self steers us blindly into the future (avenoir). This perspective leaves us haunted by memories and uncertain about what lies ahead.

Past intrusions. Embarrassing memories from adolescence can rush back (thwit), or long-forgotten mistakes can reappear (fellchaser). We may also feel archimony, anger about injustices discovered long after they occurred and everyone else has moved on.

Future anxieties. We sense the judgment of our future selves (future-tense) and fear major life changes (elosy). There's also the dread of finally pursuing a dream (zielschmerz), putting our abilities to the test after years of hopeful delusion.

12. Finding Meaning in a World Both Mundane and Epic

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

The sketch of life. Life is like a sketch for nothing, an outline without a picture (Milan Kundera quote). We live everything without rehearsal, unsure of its worth or where it's going (nodus tollens). This lack of inherent plot or clear mission can lead to feelings of irrelevance (dystoria).

Contradictory existence. We exist in a world that is simultaneously vast and complex (latigo) yet filled with mundane absurdity (wytai). Our deepest concerns feel both laughably quaint and vanishingly rare (galagog). This tension between the epic and the ordinary is a constant source of contemplation.

Seeking purpose:

• Lachesism: longing for disaster to reveal what's truly important.
• Yráth: hunger for mystery in a world of easy answers.
• Moriturism: jolt of awareness of mortality, prompting reflection on life's value.
• Suerza: quiet amazement and gratitude for simply existing.

Last updated: May 12, 2025