Last week I went on a road trip to upstate New York, and I realized something during those four or so hours of sitting in my mom's 2003 Jeep Liberty with my best friend.

For the most part, those four hours were spent talking, making jokes, and singing loudly and off-key along with whatever rock or top 40 station came through the radio. As much as I love singing to the newest pop hits over and over again, I realized during the road trip the power of the aux cord in a car.

It sounds silly, I know, but hear me out – just think about all of the music that you may really enjoy, but it’s never played on these top 40 stations. Instead, you get to hear Closer by the Chainsmokers on repeat, even though it came out last year, no matter what station you choose to tune into. Maybe you like rap, but your favorite song curses a few too many times that a station decides not to play it, or you prefer indie music, but the bands you like are too underground or small to be played.

Which is where the aux cord comes into play. We dare to take our aux cords for granted.

Thanks to the aux chord, you can use your phone to look up any song you want to hear, and you can play it for yourself. I say this not because I dismiss your understanding of what an aux cord is and its function, but to note how simple it seems, since most of us have an aux cord within reach. When you consider how many songs exist on Spotify, Youtube, Soundcloud, or anywhere else, and then think about how only a fraction of the thousands of songs are selected to be played, you have an infinite choice.

My mom’s car doesn’t have an aux cord, and it didn’t limit my ability to sing my voice into nonexistence while we were all in the car, but I think about how it could have been improved. I could have picked any song to sing, and I honestly would not have picked any of the ones played during all of that time – which seems ludicrous. I listened to four hours of music, and none of the songs played were my favorites. It seems almost impossible when put into words.

An aux cord, however, gives us the power to control each and every song, and I think it’s something we take for granted. Something so simple, yet so powerful in retrospect.