He’s a fat man with a thin skin.

Tonight I was out with some friends enjoying an evening at the ballpark. A beautiful, warm evening where you could sit in just a t-shirt and just enjoy being outside somewhere and watching a game. You talk about myriad things and something came up - I found myself explaining something.

What do you bring to the table?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself more and more as the years pass. In trying to reconcile the distorted self-image with the image the world around me perceives, I find myself questioning just what I put out there. What do I bring to the table and how does it affect my interaction with the people around me?

Further, what kind of a person do I want to be? What kind of people do I want around me? Can I recognize situations that are unhealthy and toxic? What steps can I take to correct prior patterns of destructive behavior? How can I improve my own behavior to make the world around me a better place?

All of us struggle with these questions I imagine to one degree or another. It’s how we choose to deal with them that determines how much we enjoy or don’t enjoy our lives. I don’t think I’ve ever been as successful as I would like to be when it comes to dealing with these problems. Mainly, I haven’t been as successful because these are not easy things to confront but, the choice is to either avoid confronting them and repeat the same miserable patterns or really attempt to make a change and move forward and grow.

Some people need drama in their lives. I’m not sure why, maybe they’re bored with their own lives or tired or insecure but, they need something to feel better about themselves. Specifically, they need to feel superior to the people around them so, what they do is they create drama. They create excitement. It’s a desperate cry for attention, a desperate cry for help - usually it’s done to offset the person feels about themselves. They look in the mirror and they are unhappy with what they see staring back and rather than try to work on making themselves better, it is easier for them to blame the world around them.

What’s the old saw, the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves.

I’ve seen a few of my friends go through some incredibly difficult times over the last few months. I myself have gone through some tough times but, coming out the other end I can see very readily who I can depend on and who I can’t and more than that, what I can overcome and what I can abide.

I don’t mind being there for my friends and I consider myself fortunate for the ones I have because they are wonderful, generous and glorious people. I appreciate them. I hope to have been as good a friend to them in their time of need as they have been to me. It is with their help, I realize I can overcome quite a bit. But, I can’t tolerate or waste my time on petty people whose sole purpose is to revel in the misfortune of the people around them. Life is far to short to waste my time on morons like that - hence I no longer find myself having the time for fat men with thin skin.

And I find life is much, much better for it.