KS&L 404 The Perspective of Height by Tina Erwin

http://tinaerwin.com/blog/

              I'm five feet one inch tall. I've been this tall or short, depending on your perspective, since I was in the 5th grade. ‘Vertically challenged,’ that's what I've been called. When I was in the Navy I was the ‘duty midget.’

            We are the height we are physically and karmically. Everyone around me, except my baby granddaughters are taller than I am. My children exceeded my height when they each reached the 5th grade. I've been looking up to them ever since, in both the physical and the respectful sense, they are great kids. The standing joke in our family is that I always note that in the next life I will surely be taller!

            So the other day I was in Nordstrom's Rack trying on shoes. They have great shoes there, including some of the most, shall we say interesting, shoes I have ever seen. So because I was with my sister and niece, we decided to have some fun and they steadied me as I tried on shoes that were 7" tall. Instantly I was 5' 8" tall. Wow! I thought, so this is what it's like to be this tall all the time. It's amazing what this perspective offers. I could see the tops of the shelves, I could see over counters, I could see things in a way I had never seen them before. 

            But I couldn't walk very far in those shoes and I had to take them off. I felt almost as if I was in slow motion as I stepped out of them, as I came down from 5'8" to 5'1" tall.

            The world looks different from a different height perspective. We live our lives at the height we are meant to be. Men inherently know this. They don't routinely wear 'high' heals. Men pretty much accept their height and how men relate to other men is based to a huge degree on each man's height. Consider that the United States has never had a 'short' president. Even Franklin Roosevelt who spent most of his life in a wheel chair had himself propped up in official photographs so that he appeared from the perspective of great height. That sense of 'stature' is what people look to. Literally we all want an official leader we can respect. The shortest American President was James Madison at 5'4" but then President Madison didn't have today's very visual press to deal with on a daily basis. There has not been a short American President in the last 100 years.

            How we each view life is, to an amazing degree, predicated on our height. Men who are tall are universally pretty happy with their height. Not so women. Our social structure, the one created by movies and books is designed so that men are about 2 - 4 inches taller than their female companions. This is so that the woman can look up to her man with those batting eyelashes and reach her arms up around his neck. They guy looks like the big, strong hero. That is the stereotype. If the guy is too tall or the woman too short, it’s just awkward looking – for all visual media. Visual media, to be appealing, has to be emotionally balanced and over tall or over short will not appear balanced.

            Women have begun to come to terms with who they are over the years and more and more tall women are finding comfort in being tall. There are lots of tall women who marry really short guys and have long successful marriages. At some point, height doesn’t matter any more. Normal is only what works for each couple.

            Back to being temporarily tall: for a precious few moments I was 5’8” and it is amazing to see so much more, fewer barriers, a longer view. Perhaps I have to ask myself why I am this height. All genetics aside, everything about each of us is a karmic element in our long path of spiritual evolution. Could it be that this is a more approachable height? Could it be that this height offers me the opportunity to approach various situations very differently? One of my Navy friends is a gorgeous tall blond. When she walked into the room, she commanded the room and that’s pretty easy to do if you are 5’8” wearing a 2” heal. I don’t wear heals well so when the ‘duty midget’ walked in, something else had to be present within me to ‘command’ the room. Maybe that was the lesson, one my tall friend didn’t need to learn: how do you use your height to command attention in an appropriate way?

            So for drill, if you are a tall person reading this ask yourself how you relate to very short men and women. Size matters but the ultimate question is how does it matter for you?