In
the month since I have last posted something here many things have changed. But what I feel most is
that if I have not yet turned the corner, I can certainly see around it. The
future may be full of fears and fantasies, but there is now a pathway through
the fog, and for the most part, at least right now, it is exciting.
The
downside is that there is a large negative influence that has exploded upon the
scene. This is not just the
constant addition of obstacles and impediments to the practice of my
profession. No, this is very
personal and it is the diagnosis of a chronic illness of my wife. It is something that can be managed,
and it may not turn out to be as destructive as it possibly could, but it does
change the way she views herself and how she will need to operate in the
world. The extent of the necessary
vigilance is not yet known, but the impact of mortality, and of the randomness
of fate, is now always present.
This
will mean more pressure from my wife, and from inside of me, to live our lives a
bit more deliberately and bit more meaningfully – as if I haven’t been doing
that. She doesn’t like feeling that things are beyond her control.
She is hurt and angry, so I get to be the victim of mini-slights and
corrections, as if it is me who is out of control. But I realize that those slights are temporary.
But
before the diagnosis hit, and about a week after my last note here, I turned
on this computer and sat in for the opening week of my on-line course on
biology and genetics. It is being
given free ot any and all who are interested. But it is not a consumer friendly version of anything. It is the course given by Eric Lander,
the leader of the Human Genome Project, last semester at MIT.
The
only difficulty is that the course, to do it well, requires lots of time. Because like any real
college course about the Community College level, the tests require much more
than answering questions about what was taught. They require taking what was taught and using it to solve a
problem. The problem involves
terms and concepts that may have been briefly mentioned in a lecture, but which take time to review, organize and understand. For example, the course gives the list of amino acids, but
never really clarified the differences, or how they bond, or how they interact
with other proteins – or for that matter what proteins are and how they are
formed. But the questions make you
go and find these things out, which is possible, interesting, but very time consuming.
But
the main thing for me is that the course is about what is being learned
now. It is about things that were
discovered ten or five or two years ago, and how they are being put to use, may possibly be in the future, Also, it is about a basic feature of
who we are as people and how we got that way and how things inside of us work,
or don’t work.
I
find this such a refreshing change from the vagaries and speculation of
psychology and psychotherapy. The
genetic/biochemistry interactions that create many features, traits, and
illnesses that we have are extremely complex, and most are not at all clear
yet, but they are emerging, and ways to explore them are also emerging. It is such a long way from the personal
speculation about hypothetical constructs and pompous “interpretations” of
slight bits of behavior that have been true in psychotherapy for decades. These “interpretations” often reflect
much more about what goes on in the therapist’s mind than in the patient’s.
For
me, now, this is exciting. It is new, it is evolving, it is fascinating and it
could and should be useful. Will I
ever be able to use the knowledge I gain if I continue to pursue things of the
same of similar nature. That is my
goal. I don’t expect to ge a Ph.D.
in genetics or microbiology. I
don’t expect it will be me who make any startling discovery, or theoretical
break-though. But I would like to
find a way to show how so many things are tightly integrated, and highly
interactive, both inside and outside of people. How a change in diet, fatigue, air pollution, architecture,
sunlight, muscle tone, or repetitive noises can influence someone. This can interact with family
relationships, work performance, a personal slight, a sexual flirtation, a
political point of view. These
things can affect family, friends, neighbors or a whole subculture. Those
things have political ramifications that can affect diet and air-pollution that
can affect how glucose can form the proper bonds with other amino acids, which
can help or hinder a gene from performing its function properly.
It
is vastly complex, and I understand that no one can really have a real grasp on
the details. But it is exciting,
fascinating. And mostly, it is
real.
And
anyway, I’m not that good at details.
