Only The Good Die Young

       “We may be laughing a bit too loud. But that never hurt no one.”
       That’s a line from a Billy Joel song, “Only The Good Die Young”. And it flashed through my mind the other night when I went to see the movie This is Spinal Tap with a group of people, on the big screen, for the first time in years.
       I laughed so hard, so often, that I would have welcomed an oxygen tank. My twin brother sat next to me, and he was just as breathless. I left the movie mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. Like I had just run a 10K. Hard. I was spent.
       That’s exactly how I want to feel when I experience art. In fact, that’s how I want to feel after I experience anything intense in life. Movies. Music. Exercise. Sex. The list goes on. But that’s another post.
       If you go to a comedy to laugh, and the movie hits you where it counts, then laugh. Don’t be worried about laughing too loud or too often. I mean that’s the whole fucking point of going. But in a society that does not encourage the expression of emotions, this can be dicey. Societal Norms (a quasi-oxymoron in many situations) are very restrictive around expression. Societal Norms tell us that "It’s okay to laugh and cry, but only in these situations, and only under these conditions. And even then, don’t laugh too much or too loud. Don’t cry too much. Stay inside the box. Don’t paint outside the lines.".
       Well the best living happens when you paint outside the fucking lines.
       And as a man who knows quite a bit about audio, let me tell you that if you’re laughing so loud at a movie that that it becomes difficult for people around you to hear the movie, then that’s an indictment of theater management, not you. If someone can’t hear the audio over your laughter, the sound isn’t loud enough. Theater management should know that. And they should crank it up. Before the movie even starts.
       I’m not talking about purposefully disrupting anybody’s enjoyment. I’m not talking about pulling a "Robert DeNiro as Max Cady from Cape Fear" move in a theater. What I’m talking about is working with our own self consciousness, with our own inhibitions; already high enough when we’re alone or in small groups, but heightened to dizzying platitudes when we’re in a crowd.
       Art is created to illicit an emotional response. It’s through that emotional response that we connect to the art. More importantly, it’s through that emotional response that we connect to each other, and to the artist himself. Or herself. What an amazingly beautiful concept. If an artist makes a movie or writes a book or sings a song and it doesn’t move you, then the art hasn’t connected to you. For you, the art hasn’t done its job. Okay. But if it does move you, then let it move you all the way. Let it all the way in, and allow it to touch you as deeply as it can. Let it do its job. Then, and here's the real tricky part, trust your own expression of it. Allow it all the way in. Allow it all the way out. Like deep breathing. And like deep breathing, doing this with what moves and touches us creates a much deeper, richer, fuller, more satisfying, more intense, more beautiful experience.
       If I’m so moved by a comedy that I laugh so hard that at times I can barely breathe, then Mission Accomplished. That’s why I went. I trust myself that I’m not going to become out of control and ruin somebody’s night. But many of us are so afraid of causing a scene, or drawing attention to ourselves, or god forbid, doing something that causes a complete stranger not to like us, that we pull back from such laughter without even realizing it. It becomes a nearly automatic reaction. Without even knowing it’s happening, the voice inside of us goes “It’s okay to laugh aloud, here in the theater, but watch it! Don’t laugh too loud! Keep a sharp eye on how much you’re laughing, and at what volume. Don’t ever put the pedal to the metal. Reign it in. Pull back. Don’t let yourself go.”
       We live in a world that’s constantly trying to get us to conform. To fit in. To tow the line. Not just in public, but in private. The power and the depth of emotions and expression makes many of us uncomfortable, even when we’re alone with people we love. Let’s reexamine that. Together.
    Stay with me as I explore this more.


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
       

The Most Beautiful You

Really, wouldn't it be epic if we all felt this way about ourselves? And about one another?

You

Are the most beautiful You
The most precious You
The world has ever had

When You step into that

You
Will love You
Just the way You are

You
Will love You
The way I already do

©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Fifty Pack

       Fifty. It’s just a number. We give the number meaning depending on it’s context and what we, as human beings, bring to that context. Is fifty a lot or a little? By itself, it’s both. Very zen, actually.
       Nowhere is potential meaning more charged than when we apply the number “fifty” to our age. To some, fifty feels “old”; to others, “young”. I just turned fifty. To me, it doesn’t feel anything. To me, it’s just a number.
       This is not to say, however, that turning fifty has no meaning in the scope of my life. It does. But not in the dichotomous context of young versus old. But in the context of where have I been, where am I now, and where am I going.
       Physically, I look and feel better than I did thirty years ago. Time has, however, diminished some of my body’s ability to perform certain tasks. I can’t run the hundred as fast as I used to, for example. But in the grand scope of things, that doesn't mean much. Physically, I can still do what’s important to me. And I intend that to be the case for some time to come.
       To the endeavor of keeping myself fit, both Inside and Out, I have brought Discipline, Commitment, Passion, Wisdom, Joy, Self Awareness, Love, and a Youthful Exuberance. If I can apply those elements to other areas of my life, I can create success, fulfillment, happiness, and meaning in those areas. No matter how I define the parameters of success, fulfillment, happiness, and meaning. I sometimes forget that. We all do. So I’m reminding myself of that today. And I’m reminding you of that as well.
       Bringing a “Youthful Exuberance” rates as especially poignant when we talk about age. Connecting to that youthful fire and joy inside is something that time and life have robbed from many. But no matter what, we can all reconnect to it. Reestablishing the conduit to our inner youthfulness is a recurring theme of this blog. Rediscovering, and reconnecting to, that youthful passion, joy, curiosity, and wonder, is going to be one of the cornerstones as I take my blog to a business. I will help people bring more of that to their life. I know how to do that. Because I’ve been doing it my whole life. And I’ve learned a thing or two.
       When I bring the best of myself to my life, my life works better. Nowhere is this more poignant than in my relationships. When I bring commitment, passion, wisdom, joy, self awareness, a youthful exuberance, and love to a relationship, it works. When I don’t, it doesn’t. If any of those critical elements are missing too often, from either person, my relationships suffer. I suffer. We suffer.
       I took this picture just after I turned fifty. It serves as an example and a reminder to me that when I bring the best of myself to my life, I experience my own brand of happiness, fulfillment, success, and meaning. Only when I bring the best of myself do I create the possibility of making an idea into a reality. That’s what's so exciting to me about any process in which I’m fully engaged, whether it’s my fitness or my intimate relationship.
       The art of life demands that I apply myself to my visions.

©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Johnny Harmony

       In this moment, I’m looking through the center of my self, down a long hallway, and I feel so far away and small; the way something looks when you turn a pair of binoculars around and look through the other end. That’s what I feel like to me right now. I am far away from my own true self. And that true self appears so small that it feels insignificant.
       This dynamic is not created by my true self, by the person I really am, but by my false self. I at once experience an inner person as completely separate and distant from who I am on the outside, and at the same time the two feel merged, and I don’t know where one begins and one ends.This is extreme disharmony; when the very experience of who I am feels simultaneously far away and merged with something else. I’m in there somewhere, but I don’t know who I am, so I don’t know who I’m looking for. So I can’t find myself.
       My false self, also called the ego, has sensed it’s own mortality lately. My ego has sensed that he no longer serves me like he used to. I’ve been looking to minimize his role in my life. And like a street fighter who’s in a life or death struggle, he’s fighting back. Hard. There’s a struggle happening within me that’s shaking me to my depths.
       I’m not depressed about this, which is good news. Because before, when I would sense this struggle, this disharmony, I would often go into depression and anxiety. Those two clinical ailments would keep me from being able to look deeper into what’s happening. I would focus on the depression and be unable to get to what’s truly behind the depression. That’s no longer the case. I’ve made great progress there.
       Recently, I’ve heard from more than one intimate friend, that I appeared to them as a dichotomy. That they were having trouble knowing who I really was. I didn’t understand that for a while. Now I do. Because I experience it myself, on the inside. They were sensing something going on inside me before I could see it. Before I even knew it was happening.
       I have not yet reconciled elements of myself. They do not live harmoniously in me, so they are going to present that disharmony to the world at large. And certain people pick up on that.
       I know myself to be a deep, tender, sensitive man. I also know myself to be colorful, outrageous, bold, and irreverent. It’s not about asking myself “Who’s the real me?”. It’s not about choosing which pieces are me and which aren’t. Because all of that is me. I can be bold and outrageous and sensitive and tender. If I’m asking which ones are me, I’m asking the wrong questions. To paraphrase the song “11 O’clock Tick Tock” by U2; “I have the answers. It’s the questions I have wrong.”
       I should be asking myself how do I reconcile these pieces inside of me. How do I get them to live in harmony. How do I accept them all as part of me and come from a different place, a more whole place. If I’m coming from a fragmented place, where I experience those elements are disparate and incongruous, where my insides can’t come to terms with itself, then that’s what’s going to show up on the outside. That’s what some people have been reflecting back to me. Because it’s going on inside of me. It’s not happening all the time. There are many hours when there is harmony within, and thus harmony outside. That’s when my MoJo is working. But there has been enough discord, and on a very deep level, that it’s showing up enough to be noticed.
       If I make peace with all those parts of myself, then I’m not asking the question “Who Am I?” anymore. Because I know that I am all of them. I am tender and sensitive and deep and irreverent and outrageous and bold. If they are in harmony, then they will show up different. They will show up as integrated and whole and harmonious. So that’s what will be reflected back to me. People won’t experience that fragmentation if I don’t come from fragmentation. They won’t experience me as disharmonious if I’m not feeling disharmonious inside. It’s about me making peace with all of those elements. Then that peace is what I project. And that peace is real. Because it’s happening inside of me first.
       I know all of this. Now, however, it’s in my face in a whole different way. I’m experiencing this disharmony distinctly and powerfully and painfully right now. I’m not looking at it as an outside issue anymore. It’s not completely in my behavior, but in my energy behind that behavior. If I’m in harmony with myself, my behavior will be different sometimes, but not always. What will always be different, however, if I’ve made peace with myself, is how my behavior shows up. How I show up. My energy will be different, and that makes all the difference. I could take the exact same behavior, and if it’s coming from disharmony, then it’s going to come off one way, and be reflected back to me in that way. If the behavior is coming from a place of wholeness and harmony, that’s how it’s going to show up on the outside, and how it’s going to get reflected back to me.
       If I am clear inside, that clarity is what gets projected. Over the past six months or so, I’ve experienced lots of clarity. I’m experiencing a great sense of unclarity currently. On a level I haven’t been to before. Another layer has been peeled back, and that’s where I’m looking.
       I’m finally getting that this isn’t about self improvement. It’s about self acceptance. I don’t want to look at me as something that needs to be fixed. Because that means there’s something broken. There’s something wrong. With me. I’m getting that, as long as I see it that way, I will never be “fixed”. I will always find something “broken”. Not because anything is broken, but because that’s how I’m framing the whole process. If I make the shift to self acceptance, that’s how I shift myself. I don’t shift by trying to “fix”.
       I shift by accepting. By loving. Myself. Others. Life.  


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
   

Snow Magic

       On the eve of a potential Nor’Easter here in Boston, my heart races, my dopamine kicks into overdrive, my anticipation revs to that of a pimply high school freshman about to get his first real kiss, and my excitement builds like a kid before Christmas. Most people are in dread. I’m in heaven.
       It’s always been that way. But what good is paradise with no one to share it with? It’s okay, and I’ll gladly take it. But the experience is so much fuller and richer when shared. Which is why I get out there when there’s a snowstorm, whether I’m alone or accompanied by a partner in crime. Because I want to share this experience with others. I have all this joy and energy and passion, and I want to spread it, share it, let others in on it. Some want it. Some don’t.
       I encourage you to see a snowstorm as more than just a giant pain in the ass. I understand that sentiment, and acknowledge the reality of it. But a snowstorm is so much bigger than just that. It’s a marvel of nature, a powerful and awesome spectacle of the natural world. Like a temporary Grand Canyon, a snowstorm is larger than life, spectacularly beautiful, and stirs primal forces within us that respond to the magnificence of the world we live in.
       Snow is a like a drug; it changes how the world looks, how the world smells, how the world sounds, how the world feels. It changes how we feel and what we do. It alters our external reality. And it alters our internal reality. Powerful shit, man.
       As a kid, we loved the snow, It was magic. Still is. But you have to connect to that little kid still inside you. And that kid is in your heart. Your head hates the snow because of all the extra work and toil it creates. But I offer you that your heart loves the snow, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, and more.
       Connect to your heart, and you connect to all that joy and magic that adulthood has robbed from you. Tap into your heart, into that joyous, child like energy, and maybe, even just for a little while, you will actually enjoy a snowstorm. And observe the power of connecting to, and coming from, your heart.

©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All Rights Reserved.