Big People

“Be a bigger person…”.  It’s a phrase I constantly heard as a second grader, getting into brawls and arguments with my friends over petty things like who got in line first, whose responsibility it was to clean up the spill on the lunch table.  I admit I forgot about the phrase for a while, but recently, it can back to me again during our head of school’s speech at the first ASM of the year.  He spoke of three students who picked up trash on campus.  

Each year at Andover, there is a Vista walk during the first week of school for seniors.  There are refreshments and food, and of course, that easily leaves a mess since everyone is rushed to get to class.  However, the head spoke of how he spotted three students who were walking through campus and picked up that trash even though it wasn’t their responsibility.  They did it not because it was theirs, they didn’t do it for recognition, they did so just because it was there.  

When the head of school spoke of this instance, I thought of how those people were “being the bigger people”.  I suppose there’s no absolute, Merriam-Webster definition of a bigger person, because I believe it can apply to many situations.  Simply, I like to think of a bigger person as someone who doesn’t let the small things get in the way of a bigger consequence, and someone who acts without needing approval as motivation.  

In second grade during clean up, my classmates and I used to argue over who spilled the chocolate milk on the table, hence, who was responsible for wiping it up.  The bigger person would just clean up the spill, regardless of whether it was theirs or not, realizing that we couldn’t study if the table was wet. Of course, we were young back then, and no one wanted to get their hands dirty. Yet, even at school now, we often argue over who got into line first for food.  I suppose the bigger person would think, hey, it’s not a big deal if I’m not first in line but second.  Of course, this doesn’t happen, and sometimes (particularly for things like pizza), I see people shoving to be first in line.  Once, on the tennis courts, I heard two doubles teams arguing over the score. No, it was 10-8.  No, it’s 10-7.  However, I heard a person on the losing side say, “it’s fine, it’s just three points. 10-7”.  

These examples may not have done justice to the significance of big people, as I think I’ve portrayed a big person as “weak.”  For me, I’ve  tried to override this contradiction in my definition of a big person.  Someone who doesn’t let the small things get in the way of a bigger consequence.  So yes, I believe a big person can be determined and hard on important life changing decisions, like where to go to school, what major, what sports, how to treat friends, how to manage time, however they don’t allow those principles annihilate a healthy friendship or a couple seconds of their life that could make a bigger difference in someone else’s.  And now that I’ve come to think of it, I believe “big people” is merely a more philosophical way of saying someone with priorities.