Humans are social beings. We all yearn to connect with someone. We feel the innate urge to extend beyond our self and attach on to someone we deem as worthy. But are human relations the only profound connections we hold the capability to make? Or are we able to feel a deep connection with other existing factors in this strange, but beautiful world?

Imagine this. It’s another sunny 75-degree summer day. You are driving down a dirt road with the windows rolled down and the sun gleaming through your sun roof—gently warming your skin. You turn on the radio to the local country station. You flash a giant smirk and your spirits are instantly lifted as you scream the lyrics to latest Sam Hunt song. For that moment in time, you feel free. You feel liberated from every previous constructed stressor that has accumulated in your mind. Your shoulders are exempt from any weight that might have attempted to drown you before this moment.

Fast forward three months. It’s the first soccer game of your collegiate season. Hunched over sitting in your locker room chair. Hands nervously fidgeting. Your pulse is climbing with every racing heart beat. You carefully glide on your Beat headphones and turn on Spotify’s ‘Big Game’ playlist—and that’s when everything changes. The beat vibrates your ears. The sound waves travel through your body, stimulating every part of your being—every muscle, every bone, every vein. You close your eyes. With every second, your soul is being filled like an hour glass. The sand is slowly trickling in, filling up to the brim. You are now half full—capacitated with life and adrenaline.

Fast forward another hour. You dreadfully board the bus heading back to your locker room. Tears slowly accumulating in your eyes with your head drooped below your current dignity, you are replaying the game a hundred times back in your mind—desperately attempting to figure out what went wrong. Once again, your throw on those shiny headphones and let the music overtake your being. You surrender to this unbearable pain and hand it over to glorious voice of Frank Ocean. Eyes closed, you melt in the sound of his voice. You melt away the sorrows and the regrets—and just for this moment you are saved from the strains of reality.

Music connects us all to the ideal life we all imagine in our minds as it binds us to something greater than ourselves. These vibrations breathe life into our souls and give us something to grasp onto when life becomes difficult. It gives us hope. It gives us life. And most of all, it gives us an escape.