My Heart Weeps Blood

       When we open our hearts to love, we take risks. Risk is inherent in life. We manage risks all the time. Crossing the street against the light, we gauge the risk of getting run over against making it to Dunkin’ Donuts a few seconds quicker. We invest our money, risking losing some of it (or all of it) to make more of it (or shitloads of it).
       When it comes to our feelings, we risk every time we care about someone. When we care, we risk getting hurt. It’s part of the equation. What we try to do is gauge the chances of getting hurt, or how mow much we could get hurt, against the rewards of caring. The more we care, the greater the risk for pain. And the greater the chance for true love.
       For most of my adult life, I managed risking my heart. Whatever experiences I had growing up, including my first love, helped mold how I managed that risk. Of course, when you’re younger, you rarely realize what you’re doing. It’s pretty much an unconscious process. Hopefully, as we get older and wiser, we unravel this and become self aware of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. Only then can we learn from our own process. Those lessons become crucial in how we do relationships going forward. This can happen all within one relationship as well. We don’t need to have many partners to get our lessons.
       Some people never get this. Maybe I never would have, so resolute was I in protecting my precious, tender heart. But I did get it. And it changed everything.
       I first became acutely aware of my own process a little over ten years ago. Before that, I would manage the risk of love by not investing too much of myself in any relationship. I would invest just enough where I felt comfortable. As I aged, my comfort level expanded, meaning I could invest more and more. Consequently, my relationships deepened and expanded as I became more aware. There was more love, because I was risking more of myself. But still, never all. I kept just enough hidden, a piece of my heart that no woman would ever get, because of my fear that if I ever lost that piece from heartbreak, the pain would be unbearable. The risk of that pain just did not seem worth the reward of true love. Of intensely deep, incredibly energetic, outrageously passionate, transformative love.
       And make no mistake about it. Love is transformational. It is in fact the most transformational energy in the universe. Nuclear fusion powers the stars. Nuclear energy powers the physical mechanics of the entire universe in fact. But love powers the human experience. And the human experience is what defines our life. And a universe, no matter how vast and magnificent and amazing, is, without life, to paraphrase Carl Sagan quoting Thomas Carlyle, “an awful waste of space”.
       When the day came that my heart did get shattered, after twenty plus years of making sure it never would, it transformed my life. It transformed my experience of life. It was only when I became willing to risk it all that I became capable of truly transforming my life and myself.
       Since that heartbreak six years ago, I’ve learned how to risk even more. That allowed me to experience love on new levels, and thus allowed me to transform my life even further. That did not come without risk.
       Recently, I experienced the beginnings of a healing of some very old, very deep wounds. But that healing has now taken on a different form, and it’s actually opened up some wounds again. Right now, my heart weeps blood.
       This is transformative as well. Even if I’m bleeding. Because I’m choosing not to run from how I feel. I’m choosing not to let fear get in my way of where I need to go. Even if I don’t know exactly where that is. Even if that’s painful. I’m choosing to stay open and not let fear keep me from feeling. From experiencing. From transforming. I’m not protecting my heart the way I did for so many years. I continue risking it all. Because I’ve done it the other way. It doesn’t lead to anything very real. It certainly doesn’t lead to anything transformative.
       Today, my heart weeps blood. But that’s not going to stop me from loving.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.   

Kym

Kym

When I needed a place to live
You said yes
When I needed a space to call mine
You created one
When I needed a home
You gave me one
When I needed a family
You took me into yours
When I laughed
You laughed with me
When I cried
You filled me with love
You are always there for me
I love you
Grateful
Blessed
Honored
Awed
Does not begin to express
How I feel about having you in my life

                                    - Johnny (‘cuz only you and your family call me that)
                                  

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Universe Denter

       Came across this email that someone wrote to me a little over a year ago. When I read it then, it moved me. When I read it a few days ago, however, it still moved me, but it’s context is different today than it was fifteen months earlier.
       The email means something more to me now than it did then, because of where I’m at today and what I’ve come to. I have a viscerally different experience today when I read this little note than I did even just a few short months ago. That excites me to no end. Because that is true evidence of progress, of growth, of some sort of transformation.  
       And, if that were not enough, just now, as I’m writing this little prelude to the aforementioned email, a feather flies right in front of me. It hangs around for about half a minute, floating and darting, riding the air currents, just like in the movie Forrest Gump. In fact, exactly like in Forrest Gump. I’ve got goosebumps watching it here, outside of Starbucks in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Most coffee shops where I go to write don’t have tables outside. This one does, and I felt the pull of the outdoors. Taken with what I’m writing about, this little episode was yet another sign from the universe that I’m on the right track.
       Man, I love this shit…….

“Got a chance to read some of your stuff. I continue my thought from the other night....you are truly a fascinating guy. I've got a challenge trying to rationalize the whole package in my head - there's some really contradictory pieces you put out there. So for now, I'm just going to think of you as "the onion” (as in, you clearly have a lot of layers).

Glad you got inspired at your seminar yesterday. You inspired me too. You are clearly living your life out loud. I've done the complete opposite. I have done some really cool stuff, but have almost put the sunglasses on so people DON'T notice. Almost like, "if you have to tell people your cool, you aren't". They always have - I just always brush my stuff aside like I'm too cool to care. Or it would be arrogant to ask people to pay attention.

I've decided to take the sunglasses off. Time to live out loud a little myself. Granted, you'll never see me sporting a purple satin shirt kind of out loud, but I'm going to put my stuff out there and watch what happens. Meeting you was just one open door I happened to walk through, and I met a truly unique, authentic, cool person. And if connect all those dots over the course of a year, I bet I'll have a pretty amazing year.
So thanks for kicking it off. You made a dent in my universe. And that's pretty f'ing cool.”

       Today, I see this touching note as yet more testimony to my dharma, to my life’s calling, to my nature, to my way. I see it as more validation for what has become progressively clearer to me over the summer, especially during my time at Omega and Kripalu.    
        I dent people’s universe. Clint Piatelli: Universe Denter.
        I’ll take that.

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.   

Cut Offs

       Fashion. At once completely superficial and shallow, and at the same time, a window into something about who we are and how we relate to each other. Fashion is at once a statement of our own humanity and of our own individuality. Its fascinating to me.
       So I’m hanging at one of my favorite local watering holes and start talking to a woman who I’m guessing is about fifteen years or so younger than I am. She notices what I’m wearing, and says to me, “Are those cut off jean shorts?” It seemed like a completely rhetorical question. Part of me wanted to reply in a total wise ass way. “No. They’re actually made of human skin, sewn from the hides of my most recent hostage victims. Like in The Silence of The Lambs…..”. But I refrained from that retort. What’s great about having so many creative voices inside you is that at any one moment you have a tremendous range of options from which to chose. In this moment, I went with something a little closer to home as opposed to a voice somewhere out in the stratosphere of my own imagination. But let me say, I’m grateful for those voices out on my cosmic imaginative fringe.
       Anyway, when she asked the redundantly rhetorically rhetoric query that had drippings of contempt, I said “Yes they are.” There was a pause, as if she was somehow surprised by my response. “Those……(longer pause)…..aren’t in” she said, her voice now laced with contempt. I immediately responded, “In What?”. Again, I think she expected some sort of pause after her probing question, because the rapidity of my retort caught her by surprise, as she stammered a bit and eventually came back with “Ah….in style” This time, she practically sneered when she spoke, and her voice was now completely overdosed with contempt .
       Ah yes. Style. How silly of me. Once again, it didn’t take me long to respond, which again surprised her. I’m not sure if she was used to dealing with men far less intelligent and articulate than myself, or if she expected me to be apologetic, or if she believed her questions about fashion and style so daunting to a man that it would render him tongue tied. No matter, but the pace of our conversation clearly flummoxed her. Without skipping a beat, I said “Who’s style? Yours? Madison Avenue’s? Silicon Valley’s? The World At Large?” Like a deer in a set of ten thousand watt halogen headlights, she gazed back at me without any clue how to keep the conversation moving along. So I didn’t wait for her, and provided something else for her to potentially latch onto.
       “Style comes from within. Style has nothing whatsoever to do with what other people think works. Style has absolutely everything to do with what you think works. With what you feels works. For yourself. You rock it form the inside out. Not the other way around. Can you dig it?”
       Another slight pause. “No. Not at all.”, she said. I then thought of my dad, who would abruptly walk away from a conversation (without so much as a good bye or any excuse whatsoever for his departure) from someone who was boorish. Dad would just vamoose from anyone who talked only about themselves, about how much money they made, who effectively carried on a monologue about how great they were without any interest in what he had to say, without any interest in having a true conversation. This woman didn’t qualify as that, but I could tell this was not going to qualify as stimulating conversation. So I said “Have a nice night”, and took off.
       Sometimes life feels like a pleasant long cruise down a straight highway. Sometimes it feels like an exciting formula one race through a thousand curves. And sometimes it feels like a hit and run accident.


©2104 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Carnival (part 1)

        For the last eight years, on the third Thursday of August, fifty of us have traveled via bus to Provincetown, Massachusetts, for what’s known as Carnival. Carnival is like the Mardi Gras of the Northeast. Thousands upon thousands of people in the streets of this very cool little town; drinking, dancing, merry-making all day. Gays, straights, transexuals, transvestites, families, couples, singles. There’s a theme every year, and it all culminates in a mayhemic parade. It’s an absolute shitload of fun. This year, I had an interaction with a guy that proved the inspiration for this post.   
       This man, who took his virgin trip to Carnival last year, approached me at The Beachcomber, an outdoor restaurant and bar overlooking the ocean that we stop at every year on our way to Provincetown. He said “Ya know, when I first saw you on the bus last year, I didn’t like you. Even though I hadn’t met you. You had no shirt on, wore a couple of earrings, and had all this energy. I thought you were just a guy who was totally into himself, just really narcissistic.” He continued “But, I gotta say, I was so wrong about you. I really get that you’re a friendly, loving person. You really care about the people on this trip, and you do what you can to see that everyone enjoys themselves. And your spirit is infectious. I’ve really come to like you.”
       Now, I didn’t know this guy at all. But what he said to me really warmed my heart. And it got me thinking about what we miss when we polarize. So, just because I wasn’t wearing a shirt, this guy made the assumption that I was a narcissist. He set it up in his own head that somehow I couldn’t be shirtless and a deeply caring man. He polarized shirtlessness with lovingness.
       The truth is that I am very comfortable with my body. But this was not always the case. I’ve worked hard at being comfortable, at being at ease, with myself. Not only through lots of exercise and proper nutrition and education, but by doing the work on my insides as well. My back story, which is actually a source of potential connection because, in my story is a piece of your story, gets totally lost when you leap to judgments about somebody based on what they are, or are not, wearing. And, on a purely superficial level, the simple fact is that I don’t like wearing a lot of clothes in the hot summer when I don’t have to.
       When people see a shirtless man, there can be a natural tendency to assume certain things. No shirt equals self absorbed narcissist who really doesn’t care a lot about people and is probably a cocky jerk. That’s quite the leap. But it’s made all the time. And it’s not under my control. So I don’t worry much about it. The day I start changing my preference of not wearing a shirt because I’m afraid that you’re going to think I’m a narcissist is the day I’ve sold myself out. I accept that my way is not going to resonate with everybody. I accept that some will snicker, or be put off, or downright not like me, just based on that. I accept that and understand that it comes with the territory.
       Part of what makes being misunderstood worth while, however, is when I share moments like the one I had at The Beachcomber. Because this relative stranger got something from his experience of me. Something maybe he didn’t have as much of as before, or maybe he just forgot. He realized that he misjudged me, that he polarized who I was against what I looked like, that he didn’t consider the option that a well built man who goes shirtless can also be a friendly, loving, giving man who really cares about people. He got that a man who doesn’t want to wear a shirt is also a man who goes out of his way to create a loving connection with others. When he realized all that, he got a little insight. He got a little something. I was able to impact him. Just a little bit. Just by being myself, at full throttle.
       That’s my way. That’s a big reason why I’m here on this planet. And what this guy gave me by sharing his story with me is validation of my very own dharma. He gave me a mirror into my own purpose. He gave me a lesson as much as I gave him one. And we created a great little connection. That’s the way it works if you’re open to it.
       Tell me. Isn’t all that worth it? Isn’t all that juicy richness, that connection, those lessons, those insights, those warm fuzzy moments….isn’t all that worth the risk of playing your cards with a more open hand and showing the world more of what you’re about? At least some of the time? I encourage you to raise the stakes of your own life by risking more, and thus increasing your chances of getting more. Lots more. And my experience is the risk/reward ratio is outstanding. The potential “what you get” is tremendous considering what you’re actually risking.
       There’s more to my experience of Carnival. Please tune in for part two.



©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.