Do you remember the Randy Newman song called “Short People”? The words say, “Short people got no reason to live.” This morning, I woke up with that song in my mind, but for a reason you might not expect.

You see, I was short with my wife last night. Now if you’re not from America you may not understand what I mean. When I say I was short with her that means that I was short-tempered. It means that I was short of the fruit of the spirit. It means that my responses toward her were not full of grace. I was less than kind, maybe even mean.

My Wife

Now I love my wife. She is an amazing blessing in my life. She’s beautiful, thoughtful, helpful, fun to be around, she works hard, she’s always looking out for others. She’s willing to sacrifice her own needs and wants for me, the kids and others. The more I write this paragraph the more I realize that if I really want to do my wife justice, this is going to have to be a really, really, really long paragraph because my words can’t match up to the level of amazing that she is. So, just take my word for it, she’s amazing.

Focus

“So if she’s all that, why would you get short with her? You must be some kind of jerk!” Well I can tell you why. I’m not really a jerk. But even the nicest person can act wrong if they change their focus from others to self.

You see, each of us has an internal focus, a center, a place where we bring all of our energies to serve whatever is in the center of that focus. When we are ministering to others, truly from the heart, then those other people are our focus. We see the need they have. We have a compassion in us. We focus that compassion on them. We begin to bring all of our energies together to serve them. It is greatly satisfying to serve someone and see their life improve or change for the better.

What really can top that off for us is when they are thankful, really thankful for what you’ve done. It just makes it so satisfying that they recognize your selflessness and they tell you how thankful they are. But what can really mess things up is when you are being others focused and helping someone and they are not thankful. They are just self focused. Especially when they expect you to serve them. Then your compassion can disappear in a heartbeat. Suddenly instead of being happy to serve them because you are making a difference in their life, you are a slave to their will. Nobody wants to be a slave to anyone.

Opportunity

Immediately when someone else acts like that you have the opportunity to change your focus from others to self. You have the opportunity to put up your defenses; to protect who you are and your pure-hearted ways. You also have the opportunity to continue to be loving, selfless, kind, helpful and remain others focused. But here’s the problem, once you change your focus to self, you become short with people. You become focused on your needs and yourself and you begin to see yourself as needy and you want others to begin to serve your need. All you see is your own lack.

When you are others focused, you see how your abundance can meet their need.

When you are self focused, you see that their abundance should meet your need.

Life

For me the word life is an amazing word. It has a connotation of abundance, growth, overflow, more than enough. For me to be truly living, I must be overflowing with blessings so that those around me are glad they’re with me. The abundance on my life overflows to them. For me to live means to live from that place of overflow. If you will accept that type of definition for living then living life is wonderful. It is rich, fun and rewarding. So when I bring up that song “Short people got no reason to live.” You can see that short people are people who are short tempered; people who are self-focused; people who have nothing to give; people who only want others to give to them. As the song says, “I don’t want no short people ‘round here.”

Really what we could do is help others to get set free from being self-focused.

Rescue

Do you remember George Bailey? He’s not a real person, he was a character in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He was about to commit suicide because he had gotten so self focused and distraught that he hated his life. The angel rescued him by jumping in the water and acting like he was drowning. He shocked him out of self-focus and despair by presenting a tragic need. Who George really was, selfless, was set free. The chains of self focus were broken and George sprang to selfless action and in doing so was set free from the desire to commit suicide.

Compliment

Now maybe that tactic won’t work for everyone, but something that can help people see their own abundance instead of their lack is a compliment. Tell them what they do have. Compliment them on something, anything. Once you help set their eyes on their own abundance then they can see how they can be a blessing to others. This can change them. This can make them taller in the spirit, if you will. This can help them to not be short people.

Favor

Another idea you may use is one I picked up from the advice columnist Ann Landers. Some of you may remember her from years ago. Someone had written her inquiring what could be done when someone’s heart is set against you or their heart is closed to you. Let me share what I mean by saying their heart is closed. As I was saying earlier about focus being on self or others; when someone’s heart is closed to you they refuse to allow you to be the center of any of their efforts or energy. They are closed to you.

Ann Landers reply, I feel, was significant. She said, “ask them to do a favor for you.” Now that is a genius answer. Because if you think of this in terms of someone needing to be set free from self-focus, asking them to do a favor; being bold enough to ask; is a tactic that could really work. If they actually do the favor then they have opened their heart to you. The focus which was not allowed on you, now is. That person is no longer short with you. The flood gates are on their way to being opened.

But most importantly they are being set free from the ravages of self focus.

Short people have no reason to really live life.

You give ‘em one.