A few weeks ago, I was walking around Bryant Park listening to a perfectly curated playlist and I felt like “That Girl.” You know the one — the star of some cheesy aughts movie where a girl from the suburbs moves to the city. The sun was shining, I was wearing a new sweater, my wire headphones were dangling (and also getting tangled in my hair) — definitely feeling like That Girl.
It was great, exhilarating even, to feel like I was the star of my own movie. But it also felt wrong. It felt lonely and isolating, and I think I know why. It’s because I was listening to music.
I know how crazy that sounds. Music quite literally is the soundtrack of our lives, it can elevate a mundane walk to class to a moment that feels more significant. But it also removes us from our surroundings. We feel more present in ourselves when we listen to music that brings out certain emotions, but we are detached from our physical environment and everyone else in it.
Of course I think there is a time and place to pop in your AirPods and tune out the rest of the world for a little while. But our first instinct shouldn’t be to play music when things are maybe feeling a little quiet and boring. We miss so much sensory information by not listening, we lose opportunities for connection when we keep one earbud in while walking along with someone.
In a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, a professor at Miami University commented that, instead of students chatting before class, they walk into class with headphones on and sit in silence. The professor said “‘that little bit of social anxiety that we have can be assuaged’” when we put on headphones, but “‘at the same time, maybe people could have dealt with the awkwardness a little bit and a friendship could have developed.’”
I know how uncomfortable and difficult it can be to walk into a room on the first day of class and feel completely out of your depth. And, yeah, blasting your go-to hype song during moments like these can feel like putting on some armor. But we owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to endure these awkward moments so we can build a bridge of connection. It’s no secret that Americans are experiencing a crisis of loneliness. Music can definitely provide an escape from that loneliness, but I think we have to be more open to forming those connections around us and being more attuned to our present environments.
Not only is active listening important for forming connections, but so is passive listening. In other words, it’s good to eavesdrop. According to another article from the Wall Street Journal, “Eavesdropping not only can deliver information about what is happening at the company, it can help people understand their colleagues’ mind-sets, workloads and moods.”
Eavesdropping is not just beneficial for your professional life, it’s also super entertaining. There’s a reason that Instagram accounts like @OverheardNewYork exist — it’s because people say some really bizarre, funny things, and we can miss them by not being present in our surroundings.
When we walk down the street with headphones in, one part of our experience is already predetermined. In a city as sonically rich as New York, we are doing ourselves a disservice if we are always choosing what to hear and when. I had a professor that said she gets the best ideas for her writing by just walking down the street and listening — we can learn so much about the world and ourselves just through that little bit of openness. To fully experience a place, to fully be open to embracing the chances and possibilities for exploration that are all around us, we have to be able to hear them.
Everyone has their own reasons for keeping earbuds in and the rest of the world out. But maybe next time you’re walking from Keating to Dealy between classes, listen to the squirrels crunching through the leaves, your peers ranting about an annoying professor, a random passerby explaining all their recent drama on the phone to their mom.
We are not all in our own movies. We’re here in a community together, and we have to listen to each other.
Nicole Braun, FCRH ’24, is an English major from Saddle River, N.J.
