Our Desire for Connection: In Prison or in the Diag
January 5, 2024
Writer: Emily Becker
Editor: Lily Miro
Last semester, I was a part of Out of the Blue — a University of Michigan choir outreach program that performed in prisons throughout Southeast Michigan. Going in, I had my expectations of what a prison environment would be like: cold, dark, sad, and lifeless. We finished our first concert, and I immediately had to write down what I saw. It was nothing like I would have expected. Often, there’s a stereotype that people in prison are “inhumane,” don’t have the same values as us or have done terrible things that distance them from our own definition of morality. Instead, what I saw was the sheer desire for human connection, and that care and humanity especially don’t just go away once you’re put in prison.
At the first prison we went to, a man was generous enough to sing us an original song he had written while incarcerated. The director handed him the microphone, and as he began, his fellow inmates started clapping, singing along, and saying things like, “Oh, I liked this one,” or “This is my favorite.” You could tell that most of the people in the room had heard it before, meaning he must have performed it for them at an earlier time. We as humans have a desire to share things that we care about and have put effort into in the hopes of connecting with other people; I saw that on that day.
At the second prison we went to, I saw a group of girls take a couple of seats near the front. They had saved a seat for someone. When the woman finally walked in the door, they immediately smiled and called her over, pointing to the seat they had saved for her. Friendship, love and our innate desire to be a part of something don’t go away just because you’re incarcerated. You don’t suddenly lose all of your humanity because you did something and got caught.
I’ve realized that, as college students, we take a lot of this connection for granted. There are 51,000 people we could meet every day, and yet we still hesitate to make eye contact with anyone on our way to class. So many of us “plug in” with our Airpods and go on with our days, but what if we didn’t? Something I’ve always loved about the warmer weather is that it gives people an excuse to not only connect with each other but also with nature. Last spring, when it was finally getting warmer, I would sit at the diag and just watch social interactions before my next class. I would see friend groups setting up picnics and eating lunches they made together, people sitting on the grass with a sketchbook drawing out the day’s scenery, or games of frisbee and people passing by asking to join, even for just a few minutes. The need to be immersed in nature, to be with people you love, or even just to be in the presence of others, is so human in itself. This desire for connection is called biophilia — the idea that humans genetically want to be around and affiliated with other living beings. At the end of the day, our desire to connect with something larger than ourselves never goes away.
As college students, we try to find majors we feel most connected to. However, it may not necessarily be how we best connect with other humans. I’m a music major, yet I’ve always known that I don’t connect best to people through music. I believe I connect best with those who are passionate about observation. Since I mainly focused on my musical and artistic projects last year, I found that many of these meaningful connections were missing. As I delve deeper into finding communities where observation flourishes, I’m learning to prioritize the communities that I feel a genuine connection to. We may not necessarily have to find a way to align our majors with our best form of human connection, but we need to be aware of how this difference plays a role in our daily lives. Every day I feel I become a little bit more human in the way that I’m actively energizing the relationships in my life.
As we go into the start of next semester, I urge you to think about the ways you could strengthen those connections, even if you have to delve outside the realm of your classes to get there. We are so lucky to be surrounded by so many different people every day, so take advantage of that. Remember that human connection is one of the greatest gifts we can ever create and is something we can always take initiative towards. We are all by-products of the same human nature; whether you’re in prison or a broke college student, it truly never goes away.
Image: Chloe Sinel
