This is a post to maybe probe slightly into the psyche of people who might already be tall.

I was watching this YouTube video on Kungfu Panda and this episode seems to suggest just what might happen when people who was considered big or tall stop being tall because other people around them started to grow and become bigger. I am not sure how many people watched the movie but apparently one of the characters, being of very small size used some magical potion which they drank to make themselves much bigger in size.

When the antagonists realized how this previously small character managed to grow so much bigger, they wanted to be even bigger. As for the previously largest character, some crocodile, he became angry, and possibly a little jealous, that he was no longer the largest of them all. He enjoyed the fact that he was the largest of all the animals, and when there was a bigger animal that showed up, he felt threatened from comparing their sizes.

What would happen is that he would steal the vial of magical growth potion and drink all of it himself, when all you needed to do was take a couple of sips to get the size you want. It seems that this super-sized crocodile had a sort of complex over his size. He wanted to distinguish himself using his innate size. No one can be bigger than him.

It is a nice episode. You should watch it.

I am reminded of the fact that there apparently was a poster on some forum (forgot which one) who was 6′ 4″, which would be considered big, but desired to become 7′ 0″. It was some male teenager probably still in High School.

It seemed that they decided to place a large part of their identity on their size. How they defined themselves had a huge part over the fact that this person was either the tallest or one of the tallest in their class.

They derived a lot of self worth and self-esteem from being among the biggest in their class, school, or group of friends. They recently noticed that their friends are starting to grow taller, and started to catch up to them in height while for them, they seemed to have stopped getting taller. It seems that this person desired to always be a ‘stand out’ from their group of friends or class by wanting to push past their social circle.

They wanted to push past their friends and peers in terms of height so that the other people can never catch up to them at least on the issue of size. As long as this person could be 7 feet tall, no matter what happens, they can always feel good about themselves for being the tallest among their group.

The late writer Michael Crichton tells a similar story. At around 6′ 9′ – 6′ 10″ he was almost always the tallest person in any room, and often by a large measure. Being maybe even 6′ 10″ at some point in his life, he is around 4 standard of deviations away from what the average height of men are supposed to be. He tells the story of how he met Wilt Chamberlain the first time. It was said that Crichton was so shaken-up by the experience of finally meeting someone so much taller than him that he actually had a small identity crisis.

From the website MusingsOnMichaelCrichton…

As an adult, Crichton found being tall made it difficult to hear people speaking to him if he was standing. (New York Times) But meeting Wilt Chamberlain, who at 7’2” topped Crichton by five inches, gave him a different perspective. 

“To my surprise, I found myself standing on a step to make myself taller….I was so uncomfortable that, after a half-hour, I had to leave. When my therapist asked me why I wasn’t happy not to be the tallest, weirdest person in the room, I had to admit that a part of me is proud of what makes me different.” (Los Angeles Times)

When you have been lauded, admired, praised, and respected throughout your entire life for something that is so fundamental, and so immovable as extremely tall height, it is hard separate one’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem from one’s size. What happens on the day when you finally do come face to face with someone who is clearly taller than you?

Does the fact that the person in front of you mean that they are inherent better than you, and there is nothing that you can do about it?

Since human height is supposed to be something we can’t change, no matter what we do, it does seem to give people who are taller a sort of smug, internal satisfaction, in sort of realizing at some level that they will always have something over another person, no matter what the other person does.

I sort of get it. A significant portion of people who are extremely tall probably has some type of complex over being the tallest person or the need always be the tallest. So what will happen when they meet someone who is bigger than them?