Simple, Man

        When I first heard the song “Simple Man” by Lynryd Skynyrd, I connected to it immediately. In my teens, introspective but not yet very emotionally articulate, I knew I liked the song. I knew that it touched something inside of me. But I didn’t know what. And I didn’t know why.
         I was aware that a big part of why you like one song as opposed to another is unknowable. Like trying to figure out why one painting is beautiful to one person and hideous to another, most of it has nothing to do with cognitive processing. It touches something else in us besides our minds. Art has the ability to evoke our hearts for reasons we may never know, because it’s not a head thing. It’s a heart thing. It’s a spiritual thing. The mind certainly plays a role, but a relatively minor one.
         The melody and the musical passages of “Simple Man” were what first attracted me to the song. I learned the lyrics pretty quickly, but they didn’t resonate with me until years later. One day, about six years ago, I was listening to the song, and I started to cry. I had cried to songs plenty of times before, but never this one. And I had been listening to this song for over twenty-five years. Why now?
         When I asked myself that question, I came up with some answers. I cried because the lyrics finally touched me in a way they never had before. And the unique beauty of music is that it can transform words. Some words, some phrases and passages, have minimal impact when they are written or spoken. But if you put those words to great music, they have the ability to transcend the page they are written on or the mouth they come out of. Now those same words, that a moment ago evoked very little, are touching your heart and soul. I have a word for that. Magic.
         Going deeper, I asked myself what was it about the lyrics that were making me cry. I was able to isolate certain passages that really hit me.

“Don't get your lust from the rich man's gold
All that you need now is in your soul”

         Here’s what it was about that line; I knew and believed that everything I needed was indeed in my soul. But I also believed that I would never be able to get to it. There was just too much shit inside of me that would forever block me from being able to mine the depths of my own soul. For the first time, I made the devastating connection between having it all inside of me but never being able to get it. Starving in the midst of a feast. That idea of that being what the rest of my life would be about absolutely crushed me.
         The next line that hit me like a cold slap across a hot face was this one:

“Oh, don't you worry, you'll find yourself
Follow your heart and nothing else”

         I believed I was incapable of ever truly finding myself. I had done so much work on myself, and I still felt so lost. When would I find me and what was it going to take? I had no idea. And it wasn’t from a lack of trying.
         Following my heart felt as impossible to me as writing a novel in Chinese. I knew I had a heart. A big one. But I could rarely get to it. I couldn’t hear what it was trying to tell me, because my mind was creating so much noise that it was drowning out my own song. I wanted to follow my heart, but I was horribly frustrated because I could not get to it. Or I couldn’t get to enough of it to hear it or feel it over the drowning sound and omnipresence of my mind.
         Then there was the chorus, which spoke to me the loudest.

“And be a simple kind of man
Be something you'll love and understand”

         Three strikes on this one. I wasn’t simple. I didn’t understand myself. And I sure as hell didn’t love myself. Worse, I felt I never would. I felt far too complicated and messed up to ever consider myself simple enough to ever understand. I was after all, a defective model. Like a car that doesn’t work right, but no mechanic on earth can figure out why. “Everything appears to be in good working order, Mr. Piatelli, but the thing just doesn’t run right. It’s missing something, but we don’t have any idea what.” That’s how I thought about myself.
         And the self love thing was so far out of my experience that it didn’t even feel like an option. I didn’t hate myself all of the time, but I certainly didn’t love myself. And I was very familiar with self hatred, and I did it plenty enough. I was a pro at beating the crap out of myself and I didn’t see the benefits of becoming an amateur or hanging up my cleats. After all, beating myself up was the only way I could improve myself. I still believed that, even though all the evidence completely contradicted that.
         So what this song now represented to me was a path to redemption that I could never take. A way out of pain that I could see but not find. Like holding a gallon of cold water in front of a man dying of thirst. The weight of the words buckled me. And I broke down.
         When I hear the song “Simple Man” today, I sometimes still cry. But for completely different reasons. Please join me for part two, where I’ll tell you why.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a simple amount of Wrongs) Reserved.


SIMPLE MAN written by Ron Van Zant & Gary Rossington
© Duchess Music Corp., Longitude Music Co.

To hear a sample of the song "Simple Man", click here

Glass Buffet (part 2)

        Deep inside of me, there’s still a child carrying the burden that he is unlovable. That he is so flawed that all anybody can see are his glaring imperfections. That there is something fundamentally wrong with him that can not be fixed, no matter what he does.
        Sometimes, when I look in a mirror, I see this kid. He stares back at me from behind my green eyes. His eyes are red. Red from crying. He’s always crying. Because he’s stuck in the place, at an age, when life just plain hurt, all the time. He doesn’t know that I’ve grown up, become a man, taken him with me, and that we’re not there anymore. Like the stories you hear of Japanese soldiers stuck on remote Pacific islands who don’t know that World War Two is over, this kid is still there.
        One of the things this kid believes with all his heart is the fallacy that if he gets enough women to love him, to fall in love with him, to like him, to trip over how wonderful and adorable and great he is, that he’ll feel lovable. And when women give him love or attention or just like him, he does feel lovable. For a while. But eventually, he needs more. He needs another to go nuts over him. So he’s constantly trying to get women to love him, to like him, to give him attention, so that he feels better. But it’s never enough. No matter how many women find him beautiful and special, no matter how many women find him lovable, he can not love himself. So like a true fanatic, like a true addict, what does he do? He tries to get even more women to love him.
        It gets better. The more unavailable the woman, the harder he tries to get her to love him. This child believes that the way to redemption, the road to lovability, is to win the love of those most unable to love. He’s stuck at age seven, or nine, or ten. And that’s what life was like then. And the harder he tried, the less he got. So he just tried harder. He’s still trying today. That’s all he knows how to do.
        This is all unconscious of course. But I’m making it a conscious process so that I can do something about it. So much of our own work involves making the unconscious conscious. The first step is awareness. If this process remains unconscious, you remain unaware. And you can do nothing about it.
        There’s a saying in alcoholics anonymous that goes “One is to many, and a thousand isn’t enough”. They’re referring to drinks, but to this kid, it’s women. I’m not a sex addict. But I could have been. Something has always stopped me from sleeping with a woman just to sleep with her. Something has always stopped me from going out and trolling for a woman to have sex with just because I was lonely or horny or needed attention.
        I have never once woken up with a woman and regretted sleeping with her. I have to find somebody very attractive to go to bed with them, and I have to like them as well. I’m very picky about who I sleep with. That’s what’s saved me from becoming a sex addict, because without that strict criteria, I could envision this kid going out and finding some woman, any woman, to ease his pain for the night.
        This is the kid who wants every woman, including his ex-girlfriends, to still love him. This is the kid who wants intimacy with every attractive woman he meets, wants every attractive woman he meets to fall madly in love with him, never break up, but then go find another woman who will give him the same thing. And in the process, not hurt anybody, because that would make him feel worthless. His appetite is insatiable. And he’s completely unrealistic. He in fact lives in a fantasy world. He’s trying to fill a hole inside of himself with that which is outside of himself, and that never works. He doesn’t know any of this. But I do.
        I’ve been able to control this child by denying he existed. I stuffed him so far down in me that he was operating beneath layers and layers of other stuff. But as is virtually always the case, the pain within us drives our personalities to develop skills that will help us get what we want in order to ease this pain. Just because we deny the pain doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s still within us. It still drives us. We just don’t realize it. Just like an alcoholic who denies he is an alcoholic but who’s actions are driven by his need to drink.
        In my case, this pain, this longing for love and attention, is part of what drove me to develop charm, humor, wit, boldness, an outgoing and irreverent attitude, sex appeal, and other attributes I needed to get women to love me, or like me, or give me attention. I like to think of these personality traits as a sort of form fitting, skin tight body suit that shows what my real body looks like but prevents me from being naked. My body suit happened to be bright and colorful and sparkly and electric. It was a part of the real me, and still is. But it’s far from all of me. And the more conscious I become, the more in touch I am with this kid inside of me, the more I relate to the pain that he still carries, the more I work with him with the intent to heal, I more I shift. When I’m unconscious of this process, these personality traits I’ve developed drive me. When I’m doing the work to make this process conscious, I drive my personality traits. They’re not in charge. My kid isn’t in charge. I am. Big difference.
        I’m aware of this kid inside. I’m working with him, developing a relationship with him, instead of stuffing him down. That’s the only way I’m going to help him release his burden of feeling unlovable. He wants me to hear him. He wants a voice. He needs me to know him and love him. He needs to love himself. But he needs to learn how. So I have to teach him. And I teach him to love himself by loving him. And loving myself. Unconditionally. The way a parent needs to love their child. The way a parent needs to love themselves.
        One of the reasons (but certainly not the only one) I’ve never had kids is that I still have a few inside of me that desperately need my love and attention. When parents have these kids inside of them, but haven’t dealt with them, they pass too much of their own shit onto their children. I don’t want to be that kind of a parent. So I’m learning to love this child inside of me, and I’m learning to love myself. I can’t say I really understand how to do that, but I can tell you that I’m doing the work, I’m going in the right direction, and I’m making progress.
       Introspection. Self awareness. Prayer. Meditation. Al-Anon. Therapy. Books. A burning desire to be a better person. A burning desire to heal. A burning desire to self actualize. Connecting to my heart and coming from there as often as I can. Loving others more. Allowing myself to feel deeply. Being easier on myself (a real fuckin’ toughy). Owning my stuff and taking responsibility for my feelings and for my actions. These are some of the methods I use and have been using for years. These are some of the methods I will use for the rest of my life. Because this is a path I have chosen.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an even bigger buffet of Wrongs) Reserved.

Glass Buffet

        Over the past few weeks, I’ve been at two separate social occasions that included two separate ex-girlfriends. I knew that they would be there, and I was actually looking forward to their presence. My interaction with both of them was absolutely minimal, and comfortable, at least for me. As I suspected, however, seeing them stirred up some stuff.
        Like the process of tilling soil, it’s not the act itself that becomes relevant, but what the act brings up; the impact of the action is where my life gets lived going forward. But only if I tend to what has been stirred. If I ignore it, or deny it, or minimize it, I miss whatever lesson is there for me. If I ignore the soil that has been uprooted and ready for new growth, then nothing new will happen. If I forget about the soil, and neglect it afterwards, then whatever was there before will just reassert itself there once again. Nothing new will grow.
        My emotional, psychological, and psycho-emotional fields inside me are no different. If something has been moved, for whatever reason, I have the opportunity to grow something anew, but only if I do something with it. Only if I look at what’s been moved and use it to create something I want.
        By all accounts, I am the healthiest I have ever been in my life. Emotionally, I am in a better space than possibly any other time. My heart is open and I’m feeling so much these days. I’m not only out of depression, but generally happier than I’ve been in years. Physically, I’m more fit than I’ve ever been. I’m ripped and shredded like a UFC fighter. I don’t say this to blow my own horn (well, maybe just a little), but to illustrate an important point. All of this means nothing if I can’t love myself. If I can not truly receive the love of those around me; if I can not own my own power and specialness as a person; if I can not embrace and hold myself like a loving father would his own child; If I can not truly accept the simple compliments I receive, then I can not step into the space that I have worked so hard to create for myself. Without a healthy dose of self love, it’s like I’m standing outside of a restaurant made of glass looking at the most magnificent buffet I could imagine, but unable to eat it. Unable to taste it. Unable to enjoy it.
        So where does this lead me now? Please join me tomorrow when I’ll share my latest self exploration.

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a giant tilled field of Wrongs) Reserved.