My daughter, Ava asked if it ever bothered me that I was short. I thought for a moment and honestly replied that it didn’t. I will joke around about it. My wife says I’m 5’6″, but I know for certain that I’m 5’7″. I recently went in for a physical for the first time in 25 years. The nice, elderly nurse wrote down my stats. I was excited to finally have proof that I was, in fact, 5 feet and 7 inches tall. I couldn’t wait to tell Lianne. The nurse was holding the chart so that I couldn’t quite see it. I had to ask her how tall I was. She replied, “5 feet, 6 and a half inches.”
I teasingly gave her a hard time, “C’mon!! You couldn’t just give me that extra half an inch?”
She looked at me with a flat stare and said, “I already did.”
Joking aside, my height has never been something I think about. Neither is my hair, or lack thereof. My Dad started losing his hair when he was young. Mine was getting thin in my early 20s. I had already bamboozled Lianne into marrying me, so what did I care? I’m vain enough to know that a comb over is a no-go. Like Dad used to say, “God only made a few perfect heads. The rest He covered with hair.”
Fortunately, I have a perfectly shaped head. It’s Jordan-esque, really. So I started shaving my head when I was 24 years old and I’ve never looked back.What else was I gonna do? Which is the heart of the matter … What else was I gonna do?
Height, hair, handsomeness. Those are things I can’t really control. Why should I take credit for my beautiful eyes and perfectly symmetrical facial features that make all the ladies swoon? In the same way, why should I fret over my stature or defective follicles? Instead, I should focus on the things I CAN control.
The Serenity Prayer is used in 12 step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s a more serious concern than my receding hairline, but the prayer is apropos.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Reinhold_Niebuhr
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
I can change how I treat my wife and children. I can change what I eat and how much I exercise. The list of things I DO have some control over is infinite, so I’ll focus on those and let everything else go. I made a poor choice when Lianne asked me about the jeans she was wearing. I answered with a frank assessment, “Eh, they look OK.”
That was a poor choice. Can I go back and change it? No. Can I learn from it? Yes. I can give those jeans to Goodwill and then steadfastly refuse to take the bait when asked anything about appearance from a female member of my family. That’s the lesson I’ve learned. Always forward. That’s my motto.
When Ava asked me about my height I recognized that I already have some serenity with the things I cannot control. Our self-esteem is often tied to outward appearances, and we spend far too much emotional energy on those appearances. Instead, let’s identify the things that we CAN control. This is the key, we first need the Wisdom to know the difference between what we can and cannot change.
This is how we grow and mature as individuals. First we define what we can control, and then we exercise courage and discipline to initiate the change in our lives. So I’ve got a simplified 2 step program.
Step 1: The wisdom to know the difference between what I can and cannot change.
Step 2: The courage to change.
It sounds easy, but there wouldn’t be life coaches and self-help programs if that were true. Despite the challenge, it is worth it. Our happiness is worth it.
My name is Bryan. I’m 5 feet 7 inches tall.
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