Tutto Cuore

By Giuseppe Percoco

"Tutto Cuore" is a coming-of-age novel, an autobiographical reflection that describes, with an emotive language, the earnest journey of a boy who sought his own path and his own place in the world, preferring intuition, doubt and the possibility of making mistakes over the certainty of an inauthentic life. Refusing any type of conformity and without any type of material or moral support, the narrator describes his early years spent in London, a city where, between difficulty and sacrifices, he learned to believe in himself and to truly live in fraternity in another culture, conquering civil values that transformed him into a conscious man.

Altruism, the rejection of racism, hatred and inequality become the first major achievements of a person who lives alive and free, and the author encourages each reader so that they can be the pillars of every man, in the name of that spark that indicates a global change beyond the self-interest and selfishnessthat's so abundant in our society.Uniqueness and freedom, key concepts of this book, are goals achievable only through the courage to experience the world, to risk in order to earn and above all, through empathy and altruism, of which this book gives concrete proof. A coming-of-age book valid even for adults, a reflective work besides just formative and contemporary, we can recommend it also orsolely as an enjoyable novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9788891152855

Book preview

Giuseppe Percoco

Tutto Cuore

Titolo | Tutto Cuore

Autore | Giuseppe Percoco

ISBN | 9788891152855

Prima edizione digitale: 2014

© Tutti i diritti riservati all’Autore

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  To those who, not knowing how to take me,

simply loved me.

… to all those who confronttheir own journeywith courage, moving away from all that is easy, supporting the weight of people that have lost the meaning of Life, waking up every day indignant, without ever complaining…

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Gandhi

Introduction

I once read a book that started like this:

It is not necessary to have an exceptional intelligence to understand that a response is wrong, but to understand that a question is wrong you need a creative mind.

And it was love.

From birth, bound to an umbilical cord of correctness, we undergo experiences that hurl us into a completely different dimension than what we would have naturally chosen.

Reality is nothing more than something deliberately created, modified, or worse, alterable, at any time, that follows a logical behavior in most cases unconsciously created and often does not reflect what we want nor what we feel, but especially not what we see. Reality, in reality, is fiction.

The scenario is of individuals that assist in disbelief, then in resignation, the mediocre illusionists enforcing, with the justification of conformity, their pitiful spectacle that, right on time, reveals the most dangerous of traps, one that will have the power to close the doors of the mind and open those of the heart for a new and eager hope: the hope of a new deception.

So, dazed and frightened, we allow misguided frauds to continue on in a career where the only tool needed is a briefcase that they promise is filled with truth and the solutions to all your problems, when actually it is empty, filled instead with dreams and experiences stolen from those who no longer ask questions, becoming spectators of their own existence.

Sometimes, when confronted by the natural beauty of a new horizon, even before you discover and savor its magic in colors, flavors, paths, gardens, you are taken over by unsettling ideas that, selfishly, we see already at work thinking of how to ‘abuse’ the earth that is hosting us in an unparalleled landscape, that just wants to be valued for what it is and for what it naturally possesses.

Despite the obvious, we are determined to reinforce mistaken values which not only make day-to-day life difficult, but also destroy the only virtue that should be preserved at all costs: our uniqueness.

Our uniqueness is the origin of origins, a pure term, right, wise, but sometimes sadly conflicting with another adjective that must be included among those that are just: evolution

It is from this uniqueness that new ideas are born. It’s from this uniqueness that new projects are born, projects that contribute to our common path, our social duty.A‘collective definition’ that contains a collection of individualities that often, however, cross a thin, invisible border, making them homogeneous and passing them on, now impure to a fate that will change them from a raw and unique beauty: It was and now it is no longer.

Uniqueness is Mother of all the Mothers.First and foremost the Mother of generosity, so high that itextinguishes the meaning of its own life to remove the oxygen from all its branches, to make it converge and finally concede to a single sacrifice defended and placed in the womb: Evolution.

The panoramas, the souls of a place, provide History with eyes in the hope that they will begin to see again, delving in to everything that covers, in an incredibly futile way, a path that is found inside and outin order tofulfill an apparent contradiction, one that brings real truth through the uniqueness of evolution: To become who you are.

…. How can you believe a person who promises to unite you in peace and prosperity with the rest of the world but starts by dividing you intoleft and right?

Tutto Cuore

I was the first of my friends to leave home and I remember that everyone around me said, It will only last a week. That sentence scared me, enough to convince me to not come back again.

The fear was not from the thought that for some reason I could not do it, but from seeing thatno one hesitated for even a second to label me a failure from the beginning.

How could they not see the person that I saw? How could they not feel what I felt?

He’ll come backin a week. And I opened my eyes.

It would have been a given, simple and boring to feel offended. I could respond accordingly and fight against this free criticism. Yet sometimes criticism, even when it is not presented in a constructive way, needs our help to free the opportunity that it often hides: the opportunity to finally tell ourselves the truth.

So in a moment I was thrown light years away from them and fell into another world, a world frighteningly unknown: my own.

If we didn’t doubt ourselves, if each of us searched for our true potential before trying to demonstrate something we cannot, we would not have to be surprised to see others reach nothing, the nothing that guides us in front of a mirror that shock us with a shared imagine: our own.

That nothing, not synonymous with emptiness but with not being able to be, is powerfully and obviously delivered into the arms of others with claims of paternity. With the same presumption that takes us away from that which, if so obvious, would have been recognized by the others even before us, and ended in a necessary plunder of the mere sight of so much wealth: the substance.

Communication is the most instinctive act. Visible immediately when a newborn cries to tell his mother he is hungry, who with a simple smile rests him on her chest and within the warmth of her arms and, without uttering a wordcalms him even before feeding him: a voice whispers, a pen informs, a letter arrives. Communication or Love, call it what you will.

If communication is the most natural act, one that at times seems fulfilled solely through gestures, then whydoes it also breed conflicts and misunderstandings, ones that make our relationships with others difficult and our relationship with ourselves even worse?

Why does every idea painted change color from one canvas to another? Why doesthe same idea from a different part of the same streamchange flavor, taste, clarity, and lose uniqueness?

The freedom to be is already lost from the time we’re given the title ‘son. ’ Slaves of our procreators, from the seed that created us, attributable, with inherited characteristics, restricted byour timeand how we use it, from the teachings we forged, processed, edited.

The freedom to be opposes the slavery of being determined by others. Freedom to be that passes through the chains of our journey, which will no longer exist when we will be brave enough toview them instead as bright rings to depend on.

The knowledge that we finally find will dictate new behaviors and will probably even become new teachings – for us principles, for others opportunities – that are able to be compiled and grown into the cleanest forms of renewable energy: A love for knowledge that comes by overcoming your own limitations and a future, one that starts from the present and closesthe past.

To reach that point we cannot avoid the research, effort or pain. He who knows the good also knows the bad. He who does not know the bad, in reality doesn’t know the good either. It is only he who lives life to the fullest who, notseeinga reasonto compromise and thanks to a hurricane rage, can afford to silence patrons of the bazarwho succeed more and more often to trade that which must not be traded: uniqueness.

Read and study, meet others without carrying prejudices, combat injustices and destroy imposed boundaries, and when someone asks you why you don’t act like he does, don’t respond the only way you should: Simply because I am not you. The response is so ordinary that it won’t be comprehended.

…. how can I tell you in silence?

Born from the old middle class that populated Italy, brought up north for work purposes – though maybe it’s more correct to say for work opportunities – first of two sons, graduated from the Polytechnic of Milan at 26 years old. Eventually transferred to Rome for a post-graduate course, found the woman of his life, married and lived happily ever after. Actually, no.

Whoever tells a linear story without contrasts and obstacles hasn’t lived. Whoever talks of a straight and slow road hasn’t walked the path of life. Whoever says they have never seen the mountains in real life has actually avoided them and if someone says that they have never been injured by rocks it’s because they sent ahead others in their place.

The courage to see all this, the fears that paralyze you, make you aware that everything starts from there, from the hole where you fall and where you try to hide. The same hole where the soldiers rest before charging, determined to conquer something that they couldn’t see but felt. Only knowingthat it was the right thing to do, that they would have to get dirty but continuing on until their free ride home.

The courage to choose, to live your life actively, is a duty. Even Dante in the kingdom of the Ignavi wouldn’t forgive those who lived a passive life. For this courage, for the duty to not waste my life, I chose to go down another path.

I always thought it was possible to listen and react accordingly, to follow perfectly aligned tracks without ever veering off course and in the end returning home, perhaps also with the illusion of wanting to feel free and happy – lies.

How much can you sacrifice your own life?Giving it up for four pieces of advice from someone who isn’t capable of their own personal analysis but who willingly gives philosophic lectures.

So you change your life because of the irresponsibility of others who think they are making you reliable and compliant, shattering your dreams and holding you back from who you would have been. Why?

Reliable and compliant to who? To someone whodoesn’t even give you the possibility to assume your own responsibilities? First they advise you and then they force you toward a line of outstretched arms that hold empty plates waiting to be refilled with who knows what or when or how much. This is what 2, 000 years of history was for? This is what our founding fathers wanted? This is why we need different names and last names? This is why what we feel, what we carry inside of us, is suffocated?

Every man becomes a true inventor after, having worked on his machine over one hundred times with no success, finally begins to improve it and reduce the error thatat first seemed insurmountable to something negligible.

This is how our human machine is designed: visible superficially, but trulycomprehensible only after failing over and over, until the machine trusts its engineer and the engineer trusts the machine.

So, suddenly interrupting the happy fairy tale, thanking both the frauds and the medical professionals, one morning in October with four rules of French grammar in mindand 12 euro in my pocket, I decided to leave for London.

I bought my first English grammar book twenty days before leaving. I had just graduated and was celebrating at the beach in Ostia. Even then I was already commuting back and forth between two cities, Milan and Rome. The first offered me a future, the second a life. In the end I opted for the present and moved to Rome.

Before I got to the beach I passed a stand selling collectible cars for 10 euro and books for one euro. The book, titled Come on Kids, was almost thirty years old and one of