Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be revelation.
Eileen Caddy
I recently found a copy of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in one my neighborhood’s Little Free Libraries. It must be at least 56 years since the one and only times I read it and I decided it was worth another go-round. 12-year-old Andrew loved the book very much and 67-year-old Andrew wanted to reconnect with that childhood innocence.
Sadly, it didn’t move me a fraction of what I felt all those years ago. I found the story too simple and wasn’t able to connect with the characters as I once did. Part of me is actually sad that I re-read it. The magic the book once held is forever gone and there is no way to bring it back. As Thomas Wolfe famously said, you can’t go home again.
That said, I walked away with a thought that I cannot seem to shake.
If you recall the story, after the defeat of the White Witch and spending decades in Narnia, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy eventually found their way back to the lamppost and subsequently found themselves back in the wardrobe. Despite the fact that the children had all aged into adults, they immediately reverted back to the bodies they inhabited when they entered Narnia. Physically they were once again children, albeit children with all the knowledge and experiences of adults.
That is the part that stuck with me. What would it be like to have the body and calendar age of ten-year-old and the mind of a 40-year-old? In the realm of Narnia, these once-more children had experienced war, romantic love, I am assuming sex, power (they were all crowned king or queen), betrayal, and death. Now that they were back in England, how could they possibly relate to other children or even the adults? They would have been set adrift between two worlds they could never be able to fully inhabit — and I don’t mean Narnia and Britain.
Three Bean Salad
Years ago, I took a 23andMe DNA test. I did so only because a close male relative had breast cancer and I wanted to know if I carried the gene associated with that strain. Personally, I did not need to know if I had the propensity for that form cancer. I was willing to blindly take my chances. My concern was if I was capable of passing it to my children. Thankfully, the test did not detect the gene and my kids were safe — at least from inheriting breast cancer from me.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. Even though I took the test many years ago, 23andMe regularly sends me quasi-medical updates. Some are quite silly (What are the chances that bright lights make me sneeze?), but others are far more serious.
Like the update I received last week:
These odds come as no surprise to me. In my birth family of eight (Mom, Dad, and five siblings), four developed insulin dependent diabetes. While I am not one of the four, my hemoglobin A1C level has been pre-diabetic since I started testing for it seven years ago. Thankfully, at 5.7 I am just barely into the pre-diabetic range, but the fact that I am anywhere close to it feels both wrong and terribly unfair. I maintain a high level of regular exercise and eat a reasonably good diet. I avoid highly refined carbohydrates, eat lots of high fiber foods, rarely drink sugary beverages, and get most of my sweeteners from raw fruit. My body just doesn’t metabolize sugar the way I would like it to and I have to work twice as hard as other people just to be where I am. I’ve known that well before 23andMe sent their latest email.
Despite the dire email warning, I refuse to go through life afraid of developing diabetes. Yes, I will continue my mostly healthy lifestyle, but it will be by choice and not because some DNA test tells me to do so. The same holds true for any other 23andMe predictions I receive. I choose my lifestyle for my own reasons and refuse to constantly look over my shoulder disease-wise.
When I die
which I hope is a long time from now
I want to come back as a three bean salad
red kidney beans, chickpeas, and green beans
which are technically more fruit than bean
Sugar, vinegar, and oil
never too little
never too much
crunchy and tart
colorful and sweet
Free from this carcass of pain and emotion
while rich in the harvest of life
Back Through the Wardrobe
Allow me to return to Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. They became children who knew things that other children were too young to know. They experienced things their peers could never understand nor would they be ready to understand.
How can a five-year-old child live with and process the knowledge and emotions of an adult? Without any say in the matter, young Sally was given the blueprint of who she will become. What would that feel like if it happened to you or me? Frightening, lonely, and unsettling are three words that come to mind. Torturous is another.
While not exactly the same, I feel the way about too much DNA and predictive health information — especially if there isn’t anything that can be done about it. The 23andMe assessment of my triglycerides wasn’t based on my lifestyle. I never told the company anything about how I live day to day. It basically states , “This is your destiny regardless of all kinds of very important factors we have no knowledge of.” Besides making me disappointed about where my ancestors lived and who they mingled with (another thing I have no control over), it’s useless information. It’s little more than another way of saying, “You are screwed and there is nothing you can do about it.”
The Need to Not Know
If there is a point to today’s missive, it’s this. I want a life that leaves a great deal of room for mystery. Not only do I not need to know the next ten, twenty, or if I am lucky, thirty years of my life, I do not want to know. I prefer to live without having something ominous hanging over me. Actually, something ominous and yet very unpredictable. A 78% chance of high triglycerides is not a certainty — especially when it’s solely based on my birth sex and ancestry.
Instead, I choose to live a life of chance, uncertainty, mystery, choices, and oh so sweet revelation. Some things are not meant to be known and I am happy with that. I don’t want to fool myself into believing that I have control over things I have no control over.
Of course, this is coming from someone who did not want to know the sex of his children prior to their births. Even then I was very comfortable with surprise.
Thank you for reading.
When we kiss your lips taste of music
warm handed pockets on cold, frigid days
of smiles for no apparent reason
spun sugar candy and the salt of a million tears
Each kiss
planned for or unbidden
like glasses of full bodied wine
one after another
warm and intoxicating
until I am stumbling drunk with laughter
and tipsy from the befuddlement of love
Can You Hear Me Now 
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