Getting Big Enough
Ever since I can remember, for at least the last sixty years, I have lived with the reality that I am too big. The relative measure that causes me to say that has nothing to do with life insurance charts that define healthiness based on a height/weight ratio or a BMI (Body Mass Index). I long ago decided that I fall outside those standards and that they just don’t apply to me because its like trying to calibrate a blue whale based on how many grams it weighs. The excess that I represent does not invalidate the science of the index, but it certainly does undermine the practicality of the measure as a meaningful benchmark, at least for me. I will always be over the insurance chart ideal weight numbers and I will always exceed the BMI standards in amounts that almost certainly define me as at very least obese. That is an offensive term to most of us for some reason. We grew up with fat, but obese sounds so clinical that it sounds more serious and sort of nasty to boot. And then if you want to really get someone’s attention, hit them with morbidly obese. If they lacked any sense of criticality, that will likely wake them up immediately.
Size is a two-edged sword. I have already implied that actuaries look at mortality statistics and immediately go to the dark side of size. The upside of size is also well known to every kid in the world who can’t wait to get big. Big garners respect in ways most big people understand and small people envy and understand while most of the bulge-bracket of the normal size distribution is more oblivious to. In business, size gets characterized into “presence”. That is code for tall and strong. There is a fuzzy line in the equation of height and girth that impacts that presence calculation. I don’t know that it would be easy to capture and define it, but I assure you it exists. I remember that great You-Tube video of the attractiveness of males. For females, the matrix was hotness versus crazy. For males it was distilled down to cuteness versus wealth. The funny part of that video is that it ends with the statement, “who are we kidding, the only axis that matters is wealth”. Well, the only part of the height/girth matrix that matters is height… except if girth is extraordinary in the extreme. People have always underestimated my weight and commented with things like “you carry it well”. I can’t imagine what that means other than that my weight is perhaps evenly distributed over my body, which I guess looks better than having it all concentrated in one spot like the gut or the butt. I’m guessing that what it really means is that I am tall and therefore my higher weight looks more proportionate for my height than it would on a shorter person. Thus, we are back to height as the key variable.
Since I have “retired” a year ago now, I have lost 25 pounds and become marginally more fit by virtue of all the yard work I have undertaken. That’s all great and I hope to see it continue, because at my age, lighter is better. However, I am also shrinking in height through a normal process of settling. All indications are that I am not likely to be suffering from osteoporosis since that has mostly to do with the amount of weight-bearing and bone density that accompany one another, so the settling is just that, I am compressing. I remember my 6’4” step-father Irving who lived to be 95. He died at 6’4” and 240 pounds, which was more or less his college fighting height and weight. And I do mean fighting weight since in addition to being an All-American rower who competed against The Boys in the Boat that went on to Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but he was also a Golden Gloves Heavyweight boxer who was scheduled to represent the United States in the Alternative Olympics in Barcelona, also scheduled for 1936. Mssrs. Hitler and Franco decided that the Alternative Olympics would be a distractions for the Berlin games, so they never took place, compliments of the start of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona. But I always think of Irving when I think of the longevity of the big man.
As I have passed through my first year of “retirement”, I have found myself facing several issues of bigness. I’ve already explained the physical side of that, but now let me explore the broader issues of being and getting big enough. Human interaction has changed for me. I have had to learn how to deal with my children from afar, my in-laws from nearby, my colleagues from extreme and disparate distances and my politically remote contractors from less than six feet away. All have presented challenges, but all are manageable if I force myself to get and stay big enough. Getting small is easy, but getting big enough to deal with a new world order is far harder. Everyone is under some sort of new pressure from new and constantly evolving directions. I’m not so sure that the complexity of the web is greater than before, but it is all different all at once. The world has changed for us all and all the old fall back relationships are either permanently or significantly altered. In science, the proven method to identify causality is to sterilize all but one variable at a time and create a control environment. That is increasingly impossible in a turbulent world where everything changes for everything and everyone on a continuous basis and at an accelerating pace. The biggest challenge may be to find something that isn’t changing.
Like most people caught in the maelstrom, I am no longer certain that my perspective on anything is completely accurate. When old relationships change with newfound vigor in multi-directional and cyclically altered ways, there is great disorientation. Disorientation seems to have become the norm. I suspect this is why we hear of such a wholesale increase in mental illness and psychological distress. Humans do not like uncontrolled and unpredictable states. We crave control and certainty. And yet, who among us does not know people who surprise us with their ability to handle the whirlwind in ways that startle us. I know people who get frazzled in steady states, but who blossom and thrive in chaos. That seems counter-intuitive and almost inexplicably unnerving, but it’s true. I attribute it to a phenomenon I observed long ago in someone close to me. I concluded that I am a linear thinker for whom logic adds clarity. This other person did better handling chaos than order. They were random thinkers, people who could sense patterns rather than reason through sequential logic. I am certain I hit on a very real attribute characterization with this observation.
I now add to that understanding that whether linear or random, the stability in calmness or chaos may come from mass or gravitas. I know that sounds so metaphysical, but I feel there is something to it. Mass is an added dimension that alters ones ability to work through rough or calm times. And while one is unlikely to be able to alter their state of linear or random inclination, I do believe it is possible to make oneself weightier and thus more durable in changing environments. I’m at the limits of my small brain in this line of thinking so I will just conclude by saying that these crazy times have caused me to recognize that getting big enough to weather life’s new storms in our age of pandemic and political divisiveness may be the ultimate survival tactic. Go big or go home.