August is ending, and for one short moment, the world stops scrolling. Somewhere in Manila, in New York, in Lagos, hundreds of strangers pause, eyes on the same video, hearts attached to the same words: “August ends on a Sunday. Like a sweet goodbye you weren’t ready for, but looked beautiful anyway.” One comment rises above the rest: “I decided this to be the end of my doomscroll. Thank you.” And suddenly, separate lives folded into each other—different ages, cities, struggles, goals—bounded by a single shared breath of recognition.

My daily routine after I wake up is to pick up the phone. I groaned and rolled over in bed. Six o’clock. Six? I froze. For a moment, I thought it was evening. There are no big lights in the room, only the lamp that is glowing red and the room is quiet. Empty. Nothing pulled me forward. I opened TikTok anyway. Scrolling. Faces, dances, pets, memes—each one faster than the last. Searching for something, anything.

Then a video locked my eyes. I couldn’t scroll. A quiet morning in a random corner of a cafe in Madrid, Spain. A song played through my headphones: “I Was All Over Her” by Salvia Palth. Words appeared on the screen:

“August ends on a Sunday. Like a sweet goodbye you weren’t ready for, but looked beautiful anyway.”

I paused. I was thinking if I should scroll, look at the comments, or turn my phone off. I felt like a feather, so light. The pressure of leaving this masterpiece behind was heavy, so I looked in the comments. And I found one particular comment that made me stop and think about sonder.

“I decided this to be the end of my doomscroll. Thank you.” It said. I had to feel it, I had to resonate with it. So, I replied: “I’ll be going now, too. See you, stranger!”

Replies started flowing. Strangers from everywhere were reading, watching, feeling the same human emotion so rare you cannot catch it barehanded. Somewhere in Manila, a teen sprawled across the floor with a sketchbook beside them, headphones in, sipping leftover milk, staring at the ceiling. In New York, an adult leaned against the kitchen counter, steam curling from a cup of coffee, glancing at the city streets outside. In Berlin, a parent folded laundry, pausing to read the same comment, eyes soft, a faint smile breaking through the morning fatigue. A child in Lagos sat cross-legged on a tiled floor, scrolling with tiny fingers, eyes wide as the music played through cheap earbuds.

All of them are different. All of us are separate. Yet in that single comment thread, we were together. Life’s messy complexities—the homework, the bills, the heartbreaks, the small victories—shimmered behind each screen. I felt it, that strange pull of sonder. These were full lives, each unfolding in ways I couldn’t see, yet intersecting with mine for one short, shared moment.

I set my phone down. Dust floated in the sunbeams cutting across my room. A faint coffee smell drifted from the kitchen. The room wasn’t empty anymore. My legs stretched then I walked to the window. The street outside stayed quiet. A dog barked in the distance. A car passed by. Light shifted across the floor.

The teen in Manila laughed quietly at a joke in another thread. The adult in New York poured another cup of coffee, thinking, I needed this. The parent in Berlin straightened their posture and let out a quiet sigh. The kid in Lagos grinned, eyes catching the sun like sparks. None of them knew each other. None knew me. And yet, all of us had caught the same moment, tethered by one single TikTok video.

August is about to end today, where some people around the world found peace and recognition through one single piece of video on TikTok. The world moved quietly while we sat, watched, typed, smiled, and pressed pause on life for a second to feel something shared.

I laughed quietly at the simplicity of it. The screen is off. The world is still moving. My room stayed the same, but I felt something bigger that I couldn’t acquire alone. The day had started. Finally.

John Febry B. Planca

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August Is About to End, and Strangers Are Saying Goodbye Together