Altitude changes what you can hear. Halfway up anything, the traffic thins out, the phone stops mattering, and the list of urgent things you were carrying turns out to be considerably shorter than it felt at the bottom. Nothing has changed except how far away it is.
Most of what shouts at you in a given day has no claim on you at all. The opinions, the notifications, the running commentary about how you are doing and who is ahead. It is loud precisely because it is weightless, and the things that actually matter tend to be much quieter and much harder to hear from down in it.
It does not take a mountain, either. It is the walk you take without your phone, the early hour before anybody needs anything, the drive where you leave the radio off on purpose. Height is really just distance, and distance is available most days if you go looking for it.
Getting above it is not about becoming unreachable or pretending you do not care. It is about climbing high enough to sort the signal from the racket, which is a skill rather than a personality trait, and one that gets easier the more often you practice it.
The noise is loudest at ground level. It always was.
