Over the last two months, I’ve begun reading fiction. During this time, I’ve gone through six fiction novels including the works of Haraki Murakami’s ‘Kafka on the Shore’ and Gail Honeyman’s ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’. I’m not entirely sure why I got into fiction in the first place, but I think this video from John Fish (one of my favourite YouTubers) was a big reason for it.

At first, reading fiction was a little uncomfortable. Fiction encourages you to leave behind whatever prejudices or views you might have and let yourself be taken on this wild ride predetermined by the author. However, during this ride you see the world through new lenses and glimpse parts of human nature you were previously unaware of. And this happens in such a powerful way, surely more powerful than any non-fiction book could ever accomplish. It’s one thing to provide a compelling gold-standard study on the devastating effects of loneliness but something very different indeed to have experienced just how harrowing loneliness can be through the first-person eyes of a character.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from reading fiction, it’s that no matter how ‘ordinary’ somebody may seem, everyone has their own burdens, goals and views that make their lives every bit as complex as mine. I think the word sonder depicts this feeling in a much more eloquent way. I came across this word a few weeks ago when I was reading the weekly newsletter of Tim Ferriss and is now one of my favourite words. From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, sonder is defined as:

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.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

And this brings me to last week during my fortnightly Bible study with my pastor. We’re going through the book of Revelation and in Chapter 2, we are introduced to seven churches that John the apostle is writing to on behalf of Jesus. The first of them is the Church of Ephesus, and John begins by telling them that Jesus is aware of the good deeds they are doing – and they’re pretty good:

2 “‘I know your works, your toil and your
patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil,
but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and
found them to be false. 3 I know you are enduring patiently and
bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. 

But then verse 4 comes with the critique Jesus has for Ephesus:

4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you
had at first.

Reading this verse really resonated with me. There’s no doubt about it: right now, if I were truly honest with myself, I love myself more than I love God or the people around me. And while this is hard to admit, perhaps this sequence of recent events – reading fiction, discovering sonder and going through Revelation – might just be the catalyst I need to re-ignite the love I once had.