I begrudgingly got dragged to musical bingo by a few of my friends.
I know what you’re thinking. Are you 80?
First of all, that’s offensive to octogenarians. Have you met the 80-year-olds in Naples? They close down restaurants while I am in pajamas by 9:15. The same people who will absolutely smoke you on a pickleball court and then politely ask if you need some ice for your hamstring. If you are a baby in your forties who just picked up a paddle, my money is on Doris. Bet.
I had nothing planned that night, so I thought, okay. Let’s go. Musical bingo sounds harmless enough. The DJ plays a song. If the title is on your card, you mark it. Simple. Regular bingo is fine. Emphasis on fine. B-12. I-23. It passes the time, but it has never once made my heart race.
Musical bingo is a different animal.
The DJ drops the first few notes of a song, and suddenly the room ignites. No one stays quiet. No one politely hums. We erupt. “Sweet Caroline.” “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. “Dancing Queen.” These are not songs. They are time machines. You know every lyric, even if you have not heard it in ten years. The words live somewhere in your bones.
The funniest part is watching grown adults argue over the title. We can sing every verse of the song, but cannot for the life of us remember what it is actually called. My wife quietly pulls out the Shazam app like a tech-savvy vigilante, and suddenly, she is the hero of our table. Problem solved. Mark your card.
And then Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” comes on.
I did not plan to dance. I did not warm up. I did not stretch like Doris before pickleball. But something happened. My body betrayed me in the best way. I was gyrating as if I had just been handed a microphone and a spotlight. It felt borderline spiritual. An out-of-body experience. I was not Kristen the retired police chief. I was not Kristen the keynote speaker. I was not Kristen the responsible adult who hydrates and tracks her steps.
I was part of something bigger.
There is a term for this. “Collective effervescence.” It was coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim to describe the electric feeling that happens when a group of people gathers and shares the same emotional experience. You have felt it at a concert when the lights dim and 20,000 strangers lift their voices in unison. You have felt it in a piano bar when the entire room sways to “Piano Man” and you link arms with someone you met twelve minutes ago. You have felt it in a stadium when your team scores and everyone jumps as one organism. It’s absolutely electric.
Researchers have found that singing together increases oxytocin, the bonding hormone. It synchronizes heart rates. It creates a sense of belonging and trust. In other words, it literally changes our chemistry. We leave those spaces feeling connected, even to people whose names we never learned.
That night at musical bingo, no one cared about titles, politics, or who was winning. We were not perfectly in tune. God knows I was not. But we were together. And together is powerful.
So here is the awakening.
Why do we wait for concerts and weddings and the occasional rogue musical bingo night to experience that kind of unity? Why do we not design more moments where we can feel part of the chorus?
In our organizations, we obsess over metrics and efficiency and strategy. All necessary. But we forget the human need to belong. We forget that teams bond through shared emotional experience, not just shared email threads. A retreat where people laugh until they cry. A celebration when someone hits a milestone. A story that reminds everyone why the work matters. These are not fluffy extras. They are fuel.
In our personal lives, we scroll alone. We isolate. We tell ourselves we are too busy. Meanwhile, what our nervous systems crave is rhythm and harmony and eye contact. We are wired for togetherness.
You do not need a DJ and a bingo card. You need intention. A dinner where phones are off, and stories are told. A spontaneous dance in the kitchen. A meeting that begins with music instead of a PowerPoint slide. A leader who understands that people will run through walls for a cause when they feel seen and connected to one another.
Loving musical bingo was not on my bingo card.
But there I was, singing at the top of my lungs with strangers who felt like friends. For every three-minute musical blast, we were not separate lives intersecting. We were one sound.
We might not always be in harmony. We might miss a note. We might argue over the title of the song.
But we are all part of the chorus.
And when we remember that, when we create spaces for collective effervescence in our homes, in our communities, and in our organizations, we tap into something ancient and holy about being human.
The world is loud. The world is divided. The world will give you a thousand reasons to retreat into your own solo.
Sing anyway.
Because the magic is not in the perfect pitch. It is in the shared breath.
We belong to one another.
