Whether softly in the background or blasting through my earbuds, music adds a soundtrack to my everyday life.

While music has always been a form of enjoyment and art, it also creates the potential for listeners to connect their minds and hearts with the lyrics they sing or the beats they hear.

Everyone interprets music differently — that’s the joy of sharing it with others. Some people listen to the lyrics and interpret the meaning of each line, while others hear the sweet rhythms and symphony a piece creates, linking their emotions to each instrument.

There is an unspoken love language in sharing music or thinking of someone while listening to it. This love language is between friends, family or lovers, creating a new form of communication through music. Although sharing a song may seem like a small detail, when I think of someone through a song, I find a new significance to both the person and the song.

Music not only helps me communicate with others, but it serves as a self-reflection as well. It has helped me process life challenges and has become an emotional and mental haven. Playing music not only allows me to enjoy its beauty, but also to find the beauty behind its meaning and how it mirrors my life.

The thrill of finding a new song and becoming obsessed with it is what I seek in music. Every song can leave a potential emotional impact on someone’s life, whether it is as small as a smile from a warmhearted song or as complex an emotion as grief. The uniqueness of everyone being able to listen to art and interpret it differently is a small detail that makes music so diverse.

Beyond the diversity, music carries memories with every lyric and melody. Music has created a sense of nostalgia for me. Sometimes when you listen to a song, you can hear a moment in time or even recall a certain smell that brings you back to a day in your life. Turning songs like these into a playlist brings me comfort as I listen. I can recall blissful memories or reflect on how far I have come in life as a person through many different experiences.

Creating playlists of meaningful songs is what keeps us alive through music because it evokes memories that are deeply ingrained in our hearts. We can keep a person’s memory alive by listening to their favorite song or reliving a memorable moment by doing so.

Music can also hold a somber place in your life. I know a song can bring me back to an unfortunate or gloomy moment in my life, but by listening to it and moving beyond the obstacle, I gain a new perspective and interpret the song differently. Revealing how far I have come as a person and what events have shaped my life that are now a part of me, whether positive or negative.

Music gives birth to new eras of your life while allowing you to stay connected with different parts of yourself as you grow and create new connections to songs and people. There’s a community that grows in sharing an earbud or simply sharing a song with someone special. Cherish and absorb the impact you make the next time you share a song or make a memory through one.

Maria Madrid is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee studying journalism. She can be reached at [email protected].

Columns and letters of The Daily Beacon are the views of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Beacon or the Beacon’s editorial staff.