Our Place in the Universe

Size really matters... in your head anyway!

6:33 am... There are times, for all of us I believe, where our size changes. Not in any physical way, but mentally, emotionally, we grow small or large. It is certainly a common enough occurrence that we have expressions which refer to this imagined size - "feeling small" and "big boss" and "looked down upon" are good examples. Even our mythology (and anime!) will often depict deities and other beings of great power as much larger than a normal human. Our size, both actual and perceived, is a huge part of our psychological makeup, as well as our social standing. We choose our friends, our mates and even our subordinates by their comparative stature. 

Don't believe me? Ever see a CEO over 6' 4" tall? Ever see him with his executive team? They are almost universally his height, or a few inches shorter. If you do see a shorter person on the team, that person has significant power. If they didn't really impress the tall CEO, they would never have made the team. There's even a film (whose name is buried in my memory at the moment) where they parody this concept by having the boss as a short person, surrounded by his staff of shorter executives. Somebody comment with the film name, please!

Another great example which can be witnessed all the time, is a short woman with a tall guy. These couples are everywhere. If you ask the women why they're attracted to taller men, often the reply is that they feel safe with a tall guy. It doesn't matter that the guy may be a rail-thin computer geek with the musculature of a 10 year old girl - he's tall. And guys get a subconscious boost to their protective instinct when their mate is physically less imposing than they are. It is rarely something we consciously consider, but it is part of how we view the world.

Even our scientific research into the workings of the universe is a search for what our perspective should be. We can peer down into the subatomic particles close to one quintillionth of a meter - that's a one followed by 18 zeros. And we peer up at galaxies that are a quintillion times larger than a meter. Leaving us exactly in the center, neither tiny nor immense as far as we can tell... just in the middle somewhere. This may not be the actual reality of the universe, but it is where we find ourselves at the moment.

So how big of a person are you? How do you match up to the rest of the world? The answer? You are as big as you perceive yourself to be. Go out today and be big. Life is too short for anything else. 7:01 am...