Throughout my own life, I have noticed a weak correlation to people who are genetically supposed to be short or average height and their personal ambition. Most people would call this type of phenomena the Napoleon Complex but that was actually proved to be false. A new research reveals that in fact it is the tall men that are more likely to start an aggression in conflict situations. However, we are not talking about agression, but personality and personal ambition.

What I am talking about is that for many of the people I know from my childhood who was of particular short stature, their work ethic and driven personalities were always very visible. The perfect example is a childhood aquaintance I knew starting from my middle school days. He was always trying to take the highest level of classes, adding to his course load, and skipping meals to fulfill more professional obligations. There was at least one time when he fainted from working so hard and that freaked out his parents. The last time I saw him was when I was maybe 18 coming just ready to leave for college myself and he and I went to the local YMCA to play basketball. I noted that he was one of the shortest asian guys I have seen in a long time, maybe around 5’1″ -5’2″. When I was playing basketball ,I would do it for maybe 10 minutes and then give up and relax since I had not done basketball in so long. However, He kept on trying to play and would try over and over again to make just one basketball shot. His determination and will to achieve his goal was tremendous and my own father make a mark that I should emulate this guys focus and determination.

After he went to school at Cornell for Electrical Engineering, he spent the Summers working at two jobs, while trying at the same time trying to leave the Engineering world behind. He was always claiming that he wanted to get a job in Wall Street, work for some investment firm and become a junior analyst, and eventually an investment banker who would make $5 million a year. After college, after over a year of trying, he did finally find employment in Wall Street working for a firm but the Economic Recession of 2009 and onward made him loose his job, but he never stopped trying to achieve as much wealth and success as possible.

While this is just one case, I do often see some slight correlation. While it is true from the numbers that taller men are more likely to be promoted and earn more than their shorter counter parts, I would argue that the shorter men are more likely to be driven and ambitious than men who are taller. Whether the shorter of the men can succeed and overcome all of life’s bias agains them and choose the taller of the men, I am still not sure.

I do know that my own father is of short stature and that my mother’s parents intiially disproved of him because they were afraid their grandchildren would come out short, which is not true. My own father was able to compensate, and then overcompensate for his lack of height and size by being an amazing boyfriend, then husband, and finally father. His calm demeanor means that he is almost always the one who keeps the peace in the house, keeping everyone under control. We could state that if my father was not able to have such an amazing personality and capable personality, my mother would have left him for someone who was better (aka taller). I know for a fact that many of my past girlfriends who dumped or left me went on to someone who they thought was better than me, so in their mind, they were moving “up” in progress, down down. His achievements include getting a Ph. D from an ivy league school, working for a fortune 100 company, becoming a top executive, and starting at least 2 success companies of his own, and supporting his entire family of 5 alone on his salary and budget on his own while retiring only 20 years after he started working at the tender age of 34.

I guess I am making a big generalization from these two cases in saying that there is some great enduring qaulities in being short. Maybe it is because f being short that these people had to develop and strengthen other aspects of themselves to succeed in life, but that still does not take away from all of their success and personal achievements in life.