Close your eyes and imagine you're at your local bar or club. You go for a drink at the bar, and as you do a guy comes up to you and pushes you physically, and says "I told you if I ever see you in here again motherfucker, I'd kick your God damn ass!" You have no idea who this guy is. Okay, you feel that adrenaline and some anxiety come over you, and your instinct is to freeze up--this is natural.

Then out of the corner of your eye, you realize that there is an audience watching this in a movie theatre, eating their popcorn and drinking their sodas. But the audience isn't made up of other people, the audience is made up of versions of you in the future. Your self-esteem, the way you feel about yourself--it's right in the front row. He's you in a week, you in a year...later on down, thinking of this incident, the guy pushing you in the bar. It is a blank slate of how he will feel about himself as a man. Further in the back there are version of you who have been effected by your actions way down the line.

Right now realize: this life you're living IS the movie. You ARE the main character. This life is no comedy right now. You take life seriously when serious situations arise. You're the leading man in every story. You only take the screw-ups that suit YOU. You MUST live up to this audience--your entire self is watching it. Yeah, the situation may pass with you no worse for it, in body or health. You know this at an intellectual level. You are, however, watching it.

And every time you swallow the "fuck you"s that life hands you, without some dignity or masculinity, it will take a toll on how you view yourself and project yourself to others. Living in a passive, comedic, or "I've just the loser of this piece"...fuck it. That's when you aren't so serious and making a cameo appearance as a big time leading man in some stupid comedy passing through.

You look at the man who just pushed you and you say, "You got the wrong fucking man cowboy...take a better look." You point at your face, and you look him in the eyes. The audience applauds.

That version of you, in a week, his eyes are watering. He knows he shouldn't be fucking crying, so he ain't. The little remnant of a black eye disappears in time and space. He no longer starts to say, "Oh wait, wait man, please..." as the guy went into predator mode and punched him out. He asserted himself, stood firm, and acted like a man.

If the guy backed off, you thank yourself--from the self-esteem level, all the way to the backrow, where as an old man, you don't even remember the incident, you just remember...that you're a man in this world.

ahaha...when i was a kid i went ahead and hit this really huge guy for insulting my mama, and he was running away as I was hitting him, and everyone respected me but i felt like a complete jerk and apolagized after...but looking back im glad i didn't just take it like i often do now.