This is How I Rise Above the Noise

Nick Maccarone
Nov 8 · 10 min read
Photo by Max Duzij

“Simplicity is the highest sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

One fall day during my senior year of high school I was sent home by the principal for the first time in my life. Unbeknownst to me, my friend had been plotting his revenge after I’d played a practical joke on him earlier in the day. His carefully worked out scheme landed the two of us in the dean’s office, muddying our clothes and futures.

As I made my way to class after lunch, I felt a hand resting on my shoulder. I turned in search of its owner and found a classmate towering above me, a wry smile breaking the plain of his lips. It turned out he was the set-up man, a placeholder for the kicker.

Moments later my friend pummeled my wiry frame into the ground, slamming my face into the muddy quad. Before I could yell, “uncle,” our bodies were draped in sludge, our limbs entangled in a chaotic free for all. Within seconds, the entire school had gathered around our makeshift ring to take in the mayhem.

But the students weren’t the only ones with ringside seats. It turned out, the tussle was staged in perfect view of our principal, perched comfortably in his office as if sitting in a luxury box. Only most people sitting in luxury boxes are happy.

He wasn’t.

“In my office now!” he cried, the crowd scattering like pigeons. “If this is your idea of student leadership you two are through!”

If his proclamation didn’t strike the fear of God in us, it was a reminder we were president and vice-president of the student body.

There we were, standing before the dean who tried heroically to play the role of disciplinarian. Only the sight of two “model students” cloaked in muck forced him to break character, his stern gaze surrendering to raucous laughter.

“I have some good news and I have some bad news,” he said. “The bad news is the principal wants you both off student council. But the good news is you can go home early.”

Thankfully, the Thanksgiving holiday had given our principal some perspective, or at least time to cool down. We were told we could stay on student council but that another mud fight would be frowned upon, only those weren’t his exact words.

Photo by Josh Calabrese

A few days later, I was called in by a teacher who said he wanted to have a word with me. I wracked my brain trying to figure out if I’d done anything else to warrant trouble.

As I entered the classroom, Father Malo was speaking to another student. I surveyed the room, nervously shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Father Malo was a dynamic educator and a remarkable man. He was a Basilian priest, originally from Vancouver whose first words in his class Living and Dying were “I’m going to die young.” Understandably, the fickleness of life and the concept of mortality were completely lost on the overconfident and under-lived life of a 17-year old boy.

“Nick, I heard about what you did,” he told me. “I want you to know I don’t condone your behavior.” There was a pause between words as I considered how I’d let down a mentor, someone who’d influenced my young life in immeasurable ways. At that moment, he must have felt his lectures, group discussions, and impassioned words had fallen on deaf ears.

Then suddenly he added, “I also don’t condemn it. Whatever it was that made you play like a child without a care in the world, don’t EVER lose that,” he said, pointing to my heart.

In an instant I felt liberated from my self-imposed exile, the guilt I’d felt the past week. The importance of protecting my youthful spirit was not lost on me, but only now do I appreciate the full extent of that brief master class.

The artistry of life lies in its simplicity.

Photo by Bernard Hermant

The older I get, the more I’m convinced there are very few things actually worth my time — my precious, fleeting, finite time. My spiritual growth, which is to say my pursuit of heightened consciousness, is ultimately about navigating through life with the right pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

The more I strip away, the greater joy and purpose I find.

I’ve reached the conclusion a “good life” is a trifecta of sustainable health, love, (in its many iterations), and purpose. The prioritization may be different, the means of reaching each may have some nuance, but the basic tenets of a life well lived feel universal.

In fact, in all my years of traveling the world, whether breaking bread with Nepali orphans or sharing a stroll along the Danube, I have yet to come across a culture, race, ethnic heritage, or faith that didn’t value family, meaningful work, or love.

But the questions everyone from the kid blasting hip hop on a crowded subway to the maligned Wall Street banker silently long to know are do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you understand me?

I’ve wondered why the good life can feel so evasive. I think about why we’re overworked, sleep-deprived, over-medicated, and less happy. And how amid the daily deluge of information we sift through why we’re still struggling to find guidance, durable insights, and true wisdom.

I have found simplicity to be the antidote. Here is how…

Photo by Alex Guillaume

I Don’t Waste Time

Author and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck once said, “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

It wasn’t until I understood the sands of the proverbial hourglass are not evenly distributed I began to change my behavior. I started to appreciate how a grim diagnosis, a car barreling through a stop sign, or even the common cold could alter the course and duration of my life. I stopped thinking I was immune to life’s false starts, dashed dreams, or even tragedies. As a result, I try to embrace life’s fragility with each day.

My point is not to live in a perpetual state of fear of mortality but to be liberated by its certainty. Knowing I will die, that the days behind will soon outnumber the ones ahead makes me want to live more, not less. As Quincy Jones once said, “You only live about 25,000 days. I’m going to wear every single one out.”

I can pinpoint the day my view on time was changed with laser-like accuracy. In the summer of 2013, I travelled to a small town in South Africa to volunteer as a teacher. When my service ended I rented a car and drove to a game reserve just outside the city of Port Elizabeth. The scenery was cinematic, a series of moving pictures as I weaved around mountains and passed through charming towns.

A few minutes into my drive I turned on the radio but had no luck finding reception. Only the white noise of static crackled through the speakers. As I resigned myself to a silent drive, I tried once more, carefully turning the dial as if opening a safe. This time, I heard the booming voice of a South African preacher, his sermon filling every corner of the car’s small frame.

“Take my house. Take my car. You can even take all my money,” he said. “But please, do not take my time!” he cried. “Do not take my time because that I cannot replace!”Moments later, the station vanished like a morning fog.

The truth is, I’d never thought of my time as currency. But when I returned home I became incredibly selective with where I invested it. If a project didn’t contribute to my spiritual development, cultivate meaningful relationships, inch me closer to my goals, or give me joy it didn’t happen.

I realized my life was flying by. I didn’t have another second to prioritize the unimportant or engage in meaningless busyness. I stopped looking to tomorrow as solace there would be another day to call home, visit a new city, or reach out to a friend I hadn’t spoken to in ages. Time was my most precious currency because its supply was finite.

But the greatest lesson being more deliberate with my time imparted was the realization I couldn’t actually manage it. As hard as I tried, time was set in her ways, incapable of being bought, bartered, or wooed. Time management was an illusion.

I needed to manage myself.

Photo by Teresa Fernández

I Listen to Myself

For homework, I often ask my students to shut off all their screens thirty minutes before bed and write about their experience. I also assign“think walks” where all technology must be left at home as they take an aimless stroll allowing corralled thoughts to roam, ideas to rise to the surface.

Invariably when I give them the assignment I’m met with blank stares and audible groans. It’s as if I’ve just asked for a kidney. But something quite remarkable happens when they decide to close their laptops and lace up their shoes. For the first time in days, months, sometimes years, they listen to themselves.

The actress Geraldine Page once said, “If we could only listen to each other on the stage like the animals in the forest do — as though our lives depended on it.”

What would happen if we extended the same courtesy to ourselves?

I’m only beginning to trust more in the tangled thoughts floating around in my mind. Sometimes when I’m bold enough to take hold of one, I find there is wisdom on par with any sacred scroll. As Nietzsche once said, “You have more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.” The trouble is, we seldom trust that the answers, or even better, most illuminating questions require us to look within rather than out.

Over the years, I’ve tried to cultivate space for those insights to rise from the orchestra and step on stage. To me, creating the time for my mind and body to move in an imperfect, but intuitive waltz is as important as exercising.

The effort I put forth to make sure my thoughts are recognized rather than drowned out by mindless noise, or distraction has a direct impact on both the quality and clarity of my life.

Photo by Tim Mossholder

I Don’t Watch the News

I used to begin my day with NPR, read The Economist, then spend an entire Sunday morning perusing the newspaper.

I was bookending my day with car chases, deficits, robberies, and murders. I stressed over trade wars, gas prices, tax cuts, and social security. My body was quite literally taking on the troubles of the world, while my inability to do everything prevented me from doing anything about it.

It took years for me to appreciate the impact this deluge of negative information was having on my psyche. I felt my normally buoyant spirit suddenly weighed down. The truth was, all of this information wasn’t helping a thing. I knew more, but I was versed in issues I couldn’t directly influence. It wasn’t until I took a step back I realized the news wasn’t informing me, it was instilling fear in me. And operating from a perpetual state of fear is unproductive, uncreative, and toxic to the human spirit.

I still believed it was important, even a moral obligation for people to find ways, however small, to contribute to the betterment of their community. In fact, for years I strongly considered entering a life in politics.

But as I got older, I realized the most powerful way to improve society at large was by improving myself. Everything from meditating to consciously engineering my thoughts to lending a hand at a homeless shelter to learning to think more critically to learning about a new culture was a net positive for everyone as far as I was concerned.

Rumi once wrote, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” By simply putting my energy towards issues I could influence, I alleviated much of the anxiety in my life, while gaining clarity on what I could change.

Photo by Michael Dam on Unsplash

I Surrender to What’s Out of My Control

Whenever something in my life hadn’t gone as planned, I would chalk it up to having not worked hard enough. I was taught to believe determination and a little elbow grease were the solutions to any barrier or setback. Surely, with enough time and effort, I could bend the world to my dreams, aspirations, and timeline.

It wasn’t until I got older I realized there were variables, lots of them, that were out of my control. Timing is crucial in the game of life. Preparation and ability must ultimately collide at the intersection of opportunity. And sometimes the world isn’t ready for you.

But it doesn’t mean you stop doing something you love simply because it doesn’t resonate with the masses. After winning the Tony Award in 2001, playwright Edward Albee was asked by a critic how it felt to be relevant again after being out of fashion for nearly two decades. Albee responded, “I didn’t stop writing because you didn’t like it.”

Surrendering is not the same as giving up. It simply means I’ve created space within myself to accept what I want may conflict with what I ultimately get. But within the disparity of dreams and outcomes evolves an opportunity for growth that is impossible to gain when everything goes according to plan. When I focus on who I might become rather than what I might gain, my endeavors are infused with a sense of meaningful urgency.

I try, I fail, I try again. But ultimately these steps are my way of attempting to get closer to a deeper sense of Being, of doing my best each day to rise above the noise.

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Nick Maccarone

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