what if genes are less like a blueprint and more like a half-finished poem?

I’ve been sitting with 23 and me on my counter for months. my curiosity more health than history. do I have any of the scary genes? can someone help me understand wtf is happening inside my skin?

I don’t need it for dispelling family secrets. those already spilled organically—not the case for many people/friends I know…children they didn’t know existed, paternal fathers that were not, the many family lines disrupted and ensuing identity crises and internal rockslides.

I can’t help but be curious of a revealing of our deeper nature. a coloring outside the lines. these genetic revelations cast more a species-wide shadow. a little dose of human history built sometimes on secrecy. the sheer number of people affected by these unveiling secrets remind that even the most "sacred" social structures, like family, are perhaps not as stable or as transparent as previously thought. certainty becomes less certain and likely always has been, we are just alive in a time we can see and interact directly. to know. ignorance un-blissed.

at the most basic level genes seem to represent a biological inheritance; an unseen connection to the past. a story can offer continuity, the idea we belong/are part of something bigger—an ol’ survival instinct—if our genes are passed on, we live on. even without children, the story of our lineage often shapes our identity. but with that can come a defensive aspect. families, cultures and nations have built myths around their genetic legacies often as a means to justify (light things like power, superiority, exclusion, exceptionalism). when we protect the story of our genes, might we be also protecting ideas about who we are “supposed” to be? roles, temperaments, happenings, even struggles… just—welp, shrugs— encoded into our DNA (both a comfort and a cage).

another layer—the fear of disruption. if we admit genes don’t dictate as much as we think, or that our ancestry contains fractures, contradictions or things we’d rather not see, the whole story starts to unravel. that can be terrifying. if the story of our genes isn’t solid—who are we?

it can be tempting to view genetics as a biological destiny, encoded before we were born that dictates the limits of who we are. myths persist, we hear them constantly; addiction runs in families, mental illness is inherited, intelligence encoded—we are the sum of what was passed down to us, as if bodies were rigid structures, locked into preordained trajectories. curiously, this is a dangerous oversimplification of how we are coming to see how life expresses. how life responds.

genetics is less fixed code, more wide open field. the expression of our genes—whether they activate, silence or shift in response to our environments is shaped by forces far beyond inheritance alone. epigenetics has *entered the chat*; the study of how our experiences, thoughts, behaviors and surroundings influence which genes turn on or off. trauma, nutrition, stress, social connection, even how we think about our own biology—shape genetic expression. how we think shapes our biology.

then the magician—phenotypic plasticity—an organism’s ability to change its traits in response to its environment (what allows plants to grow differently in response to light and for animals to shift their behavior when conditions change) and… spoiler alert, we are mammals. we too are plastic. shaped to respond to an ever changing world. far more adaptable than the rigid genetic determinism we’ve been sold.

where it gets most interesting?? that most of what we call “our DNA” isn’t even human. the microbiome (bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses living within us) outnumber our own cells. these agental critters shape our digestion, immunity, mental health, even personality. microbial communities are inherited but also deeply influenced by lifestyle, diet and surroundings (again even thoughts—perhaps we aren’t so fully responsible for our “own” thoughts). we stay close to earth, stay close to the essence—re-membering and diversity making). 

if most of what constitutes “us” is fluid, relational and symbiotic (making life-with) then how can we cling to the notion of a static human identity? yet, we build entire systems on the idea of fixed, singular selves. enter psychiatric diagnoses and that formal/hefty DSM-IV. while useful these classifications often imply a kind of permanence. that an individual “has” depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addiction. as if these are immutable properties rather than dynamic states influenced by countless ecological and social factors. a friend recently told me about a culture that speaks of being visited upon by an experience versus having it. a small but substantial shift in perspective. how very plastic and non pathological. perhaps very naturehuman.

if we consider our biology as adaptable, shaped by environment and experience–might we rethink how we label and treat suffering? this has ethical weight. when we believe addiction or mental illness is simply genetic we risk absolving conditions that often create them—trauma (both little and big T), poverty, isolation (loneliness, as modern plague), structural violence, abuse/emotional abuse, neglect—being severed from earth—turning suffering into an individual flaw rather than a symptom of broader ecological imbalance.

the same logic applies to intelligence and resilience… even personality itself.  what we become is not predetermined; it is emergent, contingent, responsive.

plasticity can feel sticky with its entanglements and messiness of uncertainty (an unpleasant sensation of our species). but also possibility—recognizing who we are is not a fixed truth but an ongoingness entangled with intra-action…with our environment, microbes, histories and each other. 

“healing” is not a fixed goal post, end point or arrival. it’s certainly not about treating an “individual”.

ecologizing psychology reshapes landscapes; social, biological, emotional—in which life unfolds. learning to feel how clothes touch our skin, how we build our homes and communities, eat, think, and participate; how we make-with the life around us. how we care.

as living assemblages, shifting constellations of living and non-living matter. the boundaries between self and world, human and nonhuman, inherited and chosen—are living and porous. permeability offers space for change.

of nature, constituted by environments, intra-actions, participation (or lack).

we are dynamic, musical, everchanging, amorphous, alive. about as definable as a cloud.

ram dass spoke of death as taking off a tight shoe. perhaps we don’t wait until death. lets loosen the laces. lets get rid of shoe altogether. let the “souls” of our feet be back in dialogue—being with and of earth, while here.