It's mind-blowing to me that none of us should really be here. According to Harvard/Cambridge educated Dr. Ali Binazir, “The odds that you exist at all are basically zero.” He looked at the chances of your parents meeting, of forming a long-term relationship, of having kids together and of the right egg and the right sperm combining to make you. He goes further back to look at the probability of all your ancestors successfully mating, and of all the right sperm meeting all the right eggs to make each one of those ancestors. Talk about luck!
I've always felt lucky, blessed really. Whereas I've taken responsibility for being the "architect of my own destiny", as one of only two normal children in a family of six, I am humbled by my good fortune. Though I grew up in a pretty devout Catholic family in Wisconsin, abdicating to a benevolent God somewhere out there never made a lot of sense to me. But this fact-- that our very existence is basically a miracle, makes me reconsider a higher order.
And you can't be on this planet for 66 years and not witness other miracles. We tend to focus a lot on the tragedies and inequalities, but what about the synchronicities and unlikelihoods-- the miracles-- that happen every day? From thinking about someone you haven't seen in forever and randomly bumping into them, or meeting your soul-mate and realizing if you hadn't been there at that exact place and time it never would have happened. Or how about the near-misses? Planes going down that we should have been on, or the chances that I was one of the two children in the family to have dodged a genetic bullet. Pretty miraculous if you ask me.
But is it luck or divine intervention? My partner always says, "the harder I work, the luckier I get". And I get that. But what about the stuff beyond our control? And then there's the difference between luck and chance. Maybe the world simply operates according to chance operations and perhaps everything can be explained in terms of probabilities. Like winning the lottery. The probability of winning is extremely low, so you must be lucky in order to be that one person who collects the loot. But what about me? One statistic I was told was that what caused my siblings disabilities can happen in one out of 16,000 people. But four out of six? And does that make me lucky or just statistically well-positioned? Either way, it was beyond my control and I am daily grateful for the outcome.
But these four developmentally disabled sibs of mine. That was a tough one for me. I'm pretty optimistic, but witnessing my severely autistic/schizophrenic brothers and sister taking up space in the world and basically just existing with no specific purpose, seemed to me awfully unfair in the great scheme of things. Plus the devastation wrecked on my family; my parents in love at 19 started having kids right away, each a year and a half apart (it was a Catholic thing). By the time my oldest sister was diagnosed, Mary and I had already been born, and we luckily exhibited the normal developmental benchmarks. Then came the three boys, one right after the other, each with genetic damage of their own before my parents knew what hit them. No history on either side of the family. Who could have imagined?
Even after all of this, my parents followed the church's condemnation of contraception. Abstinence from physical intimacy in the ensuing years was just another hit on their relationship. This was really why I rejected religion as soon as I could grasp what was going on. On the upside, it taught me to be an independent thinker and to question everything. Except what I could feel and know in my body. I'm most grateful for this connection to my body that was forged at an early age. It's not that I didn't take risks physically, in relationships, even experimenting with drugs and going against convention in so many ways. But my body always brought me back from the brink. My body has been my sanctuary and source of deepest wisdom that always ultimately overrides any destructive urges.
Why am I writing about this now, you ask? First of all, I never wanted to use it as an excuse in my life-- the poor me's-- and pretty much kept the family secret mostly to myself. But I realized recently that somewhere deep inside me the possibility (probability?) lurked that I was just a clever imposter and that someday, someone would find me out. I lived my life of 66 years without knowing the cause of this family tragedy, but six months ago, there came the opportunity to have genetic testing done on my only living disabled sibling and a tangible diagnosis emerged-- Koolen de Vries Syndrome. And now it's my turn to find out-- am I the same, a carrier, none of the above?--- and I am intrigued and terrified at the same time. More later.
As I continue this detour on my "road less traveled", first of all I appreciate your caring enough to read but also, I feel an urgency about sharing my other discoveries about the bodymind with you. The older I get, the more important it becomes for me to pass-on my explorations and help others connect with their most elemental selves.
So please read some of my other blog posts, especially about the critical awareness of breathing and mediation (To Breathe Is To Live/ Umbrella Breathing) to inhibit the stress response (a major cause of cancer and heart disease) and the importance of gut health/nutrition (Gut Reaction/
Food For Thought) and sleep (Give It A Rest/ Time Out) as baseline practices for lifelong health. And keep interrupting those habits and beliefs (Response Ability), some of which you didn't even choose, which no longer serve you well. Whether luck or divine order is at play, we each still have agency in how our lives unfold through the power of choice. Literally, our lives depend on it. Mind Your Body, Friends. See you next time!
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