Learning to Fly	back to Articles
Written by Anon · First published in 6ft+ magazine Q1 1995

Remember me? Many issues ago I wrote an article for 6ft+ entitled 'The Unseen Abuse' and a little later I wrote an update called 'The Road To Self-Development'. That was (amazingly) eighteen months ago and much has happened since then. I moved to Manchester to begin my degree and I’m now half way through my second year. As you can imagine, living away from home for the first time both in a Hall of Residence and now in a shared house has had a strong effect on me. There were many highs of many kinds and many lows that were really low and I had to face a whole new bunch of people who’d never seen anyone as tall as me before (I have now reached my terminal height of a mere 6’ 11’’). The experiences I had gained in the TPC proved an invaluable resource for perspective amid their ooh’s and ahh’s and God, you’re tall’s - I know I’m only mid-range!

University meant living away from my parents for the first time and discovering a kind of freedom I had never really experienced before. Life in a Hall of Residence where no-one knew me was an ideal forum for experimentation. No one was expecting me to be a shy, clumsy, socially inept being, so I could take each moment to shape their perceptions of me as they constructed an image of who I might be. I allowed some of my outrageous side to show on night-club dancefloors and in my everyday interactions via my sense of humour. Perhaps most importantly of all, I began using my height to my advantage. It seemed to give me a head start, I was unmissable, everyone knew me by name. I could walk into a room consciously at my full height and cause a stir. I always had something about which to initiate a conversation with a stranger. I was different (just as I always had been) but now that difference was special, and I didn’t even have to try to be different. Instead of attempting to avoid that attention, I began to enjoy it and put it to good use. I made a deliberate effort to keep reaching out to people and I refused to limit myself to one safe social group. This caused some confusion as people couldn’t quite label me - they couldn’t make out whether I was one of them’ or one of another group, as a result I had a wide variety of friends.

My increasing confidence in feeling my fears and pushing through them led me to finally fulfil an ambition to spend the summer working and travelling abroad. I did and I loved it, but it was very difficult. I thought from my experiences in Halls that I could now face new situations and new people with no fear. I was wrong. Each new situation and each new person brings up the old fears of unfamiliarity and insecurity again, but it is easier to push through when you know you’ve managed to push through it before. Also, I had the techniques of using my height to my advantage that I had learned in Halls.

So here I am at 21, legal for anything, supposedly an adult and taking responsibility for my own life....well, trying to. For a while now, when people ask me if I hate being so tall’, I have found myself saying, "No, not any more!" In the beginning I was mainly trying to convince myself. I felt better about my height than I had in the past, but I still wasn’t happy with it. Suddenly, at a party a few weeks ago, I found myself talking to a complete stranger in his early thirties who was about 6’ 7’’ (but insisted he was 6’ 3’’). He said he’d never met anyone this tall before, but that he was really impressed by the way I carried myself. He started to play a game of complaint to get me to re-enforce his beliefs by telling me how he hated being 6’ 3’’ and what a drag it was trying to buy clothes. He must have thought I would join in when he asked, "Don’t you hate it?"

"No, not any more!" I cheerfully replied and suddenly realised that I actually meant it. I am finally truly happy being tall, perhaps because I’ve realised that it really doesn’t matter to me anymore. I just can’t take people seriously when they say I’m really tall - are you kidding?? I know people well over seven feet tall!

I found it interesting to listen to this man. I was amused at his denial of his true height and his complaints about it, but another part of me found him incredibly irritating. Why? Probably because I recognised myself in him - my god, did I really used to be like that? No wonder people reacted to me in the way they did! I knew what he was feeling and I knew how he was seeing his situation because I had shared those feelings and that view at one time. Now I have expanded my view and taken some responsibility for my feelings. I have widened my perspective and I wanted to show him this - even if just to say that such a thing is possible, but I knew it was a waste of time. He was too caught up in his position to see that his perspective is not the only one. He could not see from his perspective what I could see from mine in the same way that a man on the ground cannot see the city beyond the mountain which is perfectly obvious to the bird flying above him. He must first learn to fly, but I cannot teach him unless he desires to learn and more importantly unless he acknowledges that it is possible for him to learn to fly. He was not yet ready or able to do that and therefore I couldn’t reach him, but I refused to re-enforce his present ideas by playing his complaint game. Maybe that put a crack in his self imposed prison that was just enough for him to begin thinking that perhaps he can escape. He thinks that his cell door is locked and so makes no attempt to try the handle and escape. If he did, he would find the door is not locked - it never was.

My experience with him caused me again to see just how far I have progressed and that inspired me to write another update. But this is by no means the end of the story. There have been some very important developments during this academic year, but since this article is already exceeding 900 words I shall save those for the subject of my next missive.

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