High

One of my dearest goals in life was to be 5’4”.  I don’t know how or why I picked that number, only that as a 4’11” girl I knew not to aim too high.  5’4” seemed reachable and normal.  Only it turned out that by grade seven I was fully grown….as tall as I would ever be.  So, I have heard all the short jokes.  Really.  And I could laugh at most of them and was not bothered by the nicknames and the laughs at my expense.  After a while I was just bothered by the lack of originality.  But what did make me angry, was being underestimated over and over throughout my life based on my stature.  It made me determined, most of the time, to prove people wrong about me.  I would take on things I was “too small to do” and then do them.  I have done a lot of tasks fueled by righteous indignation, temper and tears.  At best, being short has given me motivation, and at worst, an unnatural hate for track and field – in particular, hurdles.

I did not spend a lot of time with my paternal grandfather.  He came to visit for a week or two maybe once a year when I was young.  But I remember well what he used to call me. His nickname for me was Big Enough.  And when someone would doubt me or say I couldn’t do something because of how little I was, he would say with authority, she is big enough. Just writing that makes me emotional.  I think if you have spent any time in life trying to be enough, to be worthy, to be seen as capable, attractive or valuable, then you might relate.

We spend a lot of time in life evaluating and judging people based on their appearance.  We assign value and attributes based on height, weight, hair, skin color, long lashes, muscles, smiles, eyes, curves, etc.  We decide if a human being is worthy of our time, interest or confidence based on many of those things within the first minutes of encountering someone.  Each one of those categories has a subtext and merit, and we seem to accept that in our conditioning at face value.  We rarely examine it at all. There is plenty of research and evidence that tells us that tall, attractive people are seen as more capable and will be more successful, popular and well compensated. The beauty industry is very invested in us not examining what they tell us is beautiful.  We accept it, consciously or subconsciously, and buy the products to help us achieve it. We also, have our own criteria.  So we have all been a victim of those biases and we have victimized others based on them too. We forget that no one can take credit or blame for the body and genes they are born with. We all just do the best we can with what we get.

Hopefully, regardless of our beauty and stature, or lack thereof, we have had people who could see beyond our physical appearance and let us discover our own value and capabilities. Biases can only hold us back if we buy into them. And surely we have known someone who became more beautiful, or allowed us to expose our own beauty, as time revealed our hearts. Someone who taught us that kindness, joyfulness, grace, intelligence, humour, spirituality, grit and soul can change the ordinary into the extraordinary and reveal a loveliness we didn’t see at first.  All the rest is packaging that can be set aside as we admire the gifts within.  It is something we instinctively know as children, and something we unlearn and relearn over and over again throughout our lives. 

What I love about the memory of my Grandpa, is that at the time he gave me that nickname I had not yet become anything or anybody.  I was a tiny little girl just barely getting started.  I had no awareness of my height, looks or my capabilities or what any of that was going to mean.  But he had already decided that I had everything I needed and had nothing to prove.  That I was already worthy and already enough for whatever “hurdle” was coming my way. I am sure he didn’t know, and I am not sure even I knew then, that he had given me something rare and precious. Because if he could believe I was big enough then so could I.  And so I was.