The Music of Connection: How We Share Emotions Across Time and Space

🎧 Listen to the podcast episode here:

A Moment of Reflection at a Dance Competition

I recently found myself sitting at a dance competition, watching performance after performance. My wife runs these competitions, and I help with the technical equipment that judges use to score each routine. Over the course of a couple of days, I watched more than a hundred dances and listened to around seven hours of music.

Something struck me during this experience—beyond the movement, beyond the technique, beyond the impressive choreography, I started paying closer attention to the lyrics of the songs. One performance in particular caught my attention. The dancer moved gracefully to a song about heartbreak, loss, and eventual healing. As I listened, I found myself deeply moved.

Why? Because I recognized those emotions. The songwriter’s words, written perhaps years ago about their own personal experience, somehow perfectly captured feelings I’ve had in my own life.

And that led me to a question:

What is it that allows us to deeply connect with someone else’s words, emotions, and experiences—even if we’ve never met them?

It’s a question that ties into key Buddhist teachings on interdependence, impermanence, and perception.

The Universal Echo of Shared Human Experience

Throughout history, people have loved, lost, grieved, and hoped. Someone from centuries ago could have written words of heartbreak or longing, and today, those same words still resonate with us.

Why? Because emotions, while deeply personal, are also universal.

In Buddhism, there’s this beautiful understanding that none of us are alone in our suffering, nor are we alone in our joy. The Buddha taught about dukkha, which is often translated as suffering, but more accurately describes the unsatisfactory and ever-changing nature of life.

When we hear a song about loss, we don’t just recognize it—we feel it. The lyrics echo something inside us. They remind us that even in our most personal moments of sorrow or joy, we are connected to a greater web of human experience.

At the dance competition, I saw this play out firsthand. A songwriter poured their experience into lyrics, a singer interpreted those words with their voice, a dancer expressed them through movement, and I, as an observer, received them. Each of us had our own unique experience, but we were all participating in a shared emotional journey.

Feeling Tones (Vedanā) – How Meaning is Created

One of the core Buddhist teachings that relates to this experience is vedanā—the idea that every experience carries a feeling tone. Everything we encounter feels pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and our minds assign meaning to these sensations.

Think about how one song can make one person cry and another feel uplifted. The lyrics don’t change, the melody doesn’t change—but the way we perceive them does.

At the dance competition, I was moved by the sorrow I heard in the lyrics. But the dancer performing to the same song might have felt something entirely different—joy, triumph, or even gratitude.

This is a powerful reminder that the world is not as it is; it is as we perceive it to be. Our past experiences, our current mood, even our subconscious tendencies—all of these shape the way we assign meaning to what we encounter.

Interdependence – The Music of Connection

One of the things that fascinates me most about this realization is that none of these experiences exist in isolation.

Think about the chain of events:

1. A songwriter goes through an experience and turns it into lyrics.
2. A singer brings those words to life through music.
3. A dancer expresses the emotion of the song through movement.
4. An audience watches, listens, and experiences something personal in return.

And maybe that experience lingers with them. Maybe they go home thinking about it (or record a podcast episode about it ;). Maybe they share the song with a friend who needs to hear it.

That’s interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda) in action.

Just as we are affected by others, we too affect others in ways we may never know. A simple action, a kind word, or a piece of art can ripple outward in ways we could never predict.

Buddhism teaches that everything arises due to causes and conditions. Nothing exists independently. The emotions we feel, the art we create, the experiences we share—these are all part of the same interconnected web.

Impermanence (Anicca) – The Fleeting Nature of Experience

Another realization I had while reflecting on this experience was how music, like emotions, arises and passes away.

A song that once made us cry might later bring us peace or even joy as our relationship to those emotions shifts over time.

This is impermanence (anicca)—nothing stays the same. Our emotions, our perspectives, even our identities are constantly changing.

Just as each note in a song doesn’t last forever but gives way to the next, our experiences flow one into another.

When we understand this, we stop clinging so tightly to experiences. We learn to move through life like we move through music—letting each note arise and pass away, appreciating the beauty of the composition without needing to hold on to a single note forever.

Life is an Experience to Be Had

Instead of clinging to emotions or trying to “win” life by accumulating the right experiences or avoiding the wrong ones, we can see life as an unfolding composition—sometimes melancholic, sometimes joyful, always moving.

Just as in music, we don’t get stuck on one note; we move through the experience.

You are part of this great symphony of existence, connected to every other being in ways seen and unseen. Let yourself feel, let yourself experience, but also remember—it’s all just music. It comes, it goes, it changes, and through it all, we remain connected in this shared human experience.

Reflection: What Song Are You Listening to Right Now?

I’ll leave you with this:

🎵 What song are you listening to in your life right now?
🎵 What meaning are you giving it?
🎵 Can you hear, beneath your personal melody, the deeper music of our interconnection?

If you find yourself caught in a difficult movement of your life’s symphony, remember that you’re not alone in that experience. And if you’re in a joyful movement, remember that your joy ripples out and touches others too.

This awareness doesn’t make life’s challenges disappear, but it does place them in a larger context—a context where we’re all creating, performing, and experiencing this grand composition together.

Sincerely,
Noah Rasheta

• Share
• Tweet