Buy the tickets, make a plan, load up a car or truck, grab the friends closest to you and go spend a few days of your life in such a rare setting that we call a music festival. You will not regret it. I recently attended the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee with my four best friends and we had the absolute time of our lives. The experience is one that is unlike any other and one that can not possibly be forgotten, so go to a music festival if you have any chance to, and do not look back.

I do not want you to go for the drugs; I do not want you to go for the long days of drinking or making questionable decisions; I do not want you to go to find some spiritual epiphany of happiness. Some of those things may occur while you are at the festival but you cannot go into a place like that expecting certain things to happen.

This was our first festival, all of us, we were four blank slates. That blank slate was soon filled with four beautiful days of unexpected experiences, happiness, and friendship. We entered the festival and quickly set up shop at our campsite that we soon realized was probably the best spot to be at Bonnaroo. We were close to showers, bathrooms, electricity and a plethora of fresh water. Not to mention a short ten-minute walk from the main stages. We had some great neighbors, some cool guys from Michigan who were veterans of the festival. We were all set, and we were prepared for anything, right? Ha, funny.

That night there were not any scheduled acts or events or any orchestrated happenings. That was the perfect start, so we went exploring. We stumbled upon a makeshift DJ booth with at least a hundred people crowded in a tiny space dancing and throwing their arms around and I could easily tell that we were in one of the happiest places on the planet. Everyone was smiling and jumping and dancing like not one person was watching. It was the most peaceful chaos that could occur at a place like this, and that was just the beginning.

It turns out that the whole weekend was a beautiful mess of nothing but carefree happiness brought together by music. And that is another reason why you should go to a music festival… the music. The best thing that I noticed was the positivity and thankfulness that was spread throughout the festival by the performers. All of them were so excited to be able to stand on a stage and tell their stories through songs and be able to please so many thousands of people with what they had created. Once they were up there it was not about the money or the fame or the life that they had off of the stage. They were there to put on a show and make an impact on everyone in the crowd’s life.

These four days were an experience unlike any other. We stayed for four days in a utopia of happiness and fantastic music. The Chainsmokers, Macklemore, Ellie Goulding, J. Cole, and so many more bands and artists came together at a farm in Tennessee and shared four days of things that cannot be experienced anywhere else. That is worth thirty-five hours in a car with your best friends. Of course, we enjoyed choice beverages, but there is so much more to experience.That is why YOU should go to a music festival.