Transcending Ordinary

I sat next to a virologist on my flight to Bejing and we began speaking of genetics, then viruses and it set me on an enlightening train of thought. I travel to Thailand to visit my father who is very sick. After viruses, we spoke of cancer and I conveyed my understanding of cancer as a cellular process by which one random cell, though some fluke, has a variation and though the normal process of mitosis, splits to new cells, also with this genetic anomoly. As this process repeats, soon these mutant cells become more then a localized variation of a few cells. Eventually this occurrence matures to cancer.

How can this be stopped or prevented? That was the question. After some thought, I got closer to an answer on the why. Why do people get cancer? I postulated that it is a natural thing, that we were just not built for. What do I mean? Well, I am strongly of the view that we evolved from single celled organisms to complex lifeforms capable of survival and adaptation in various environments. Basically from those single celled organisms, we became who we are today through millions of years of natural selections or many generations of surviving offspring passing their advantageous genetic traits to their offspring. Back to my postulation, humans eventually (though genetic variation) became the best they could be for their environment, so what’s with imperfections like cancer? Well, lets see, how long did this evolutionary process last? For the sake of argument, lets say a billion years totally, though only a few million in our present homosapian form. Ok, a few million years, hmm, how many generations is that? Now we have to look at lifespans. Early on, I would say the average lifespan was 20 years, then increasing over time as their genetic base evolved/improved. Maybe the first few million saw a change from 20-40years. For those years, our genetic framework was tested, over and over and generally only those “favored” genes passed on. Hmm, millions of years to double in life expectancy, not bad. Well of course, today the life expectancy is much longer due to external forces like heightened education (beyond basic instinct) and medicine. That has allowed us to increase life expectancy from 40 to 80 in the blink of an eye, maybe a thousand years. Because of this unnatural and rapid change, may of us will go beyond those millions-of-years tested ages. That 40-80 range will have genetic anomalies that we just weren’t bread for, in the typical/slow evolutionary process. Illnesses that we suffer from now in old age, never had a chance for natural selection to “weed-them-out” per say.

I contemplated this desire we have to life forever. Hmm, maybe there is a way to modify our genes to cause our cells to behave as if we were 20 years old forever. I thought we had some type of aging gene, when he brought up cloning. He mentioned of how the results have been very poor so far. I then realized why, and it was disappointing. Over those billions/millions of years, sometimes anomalies crop up which would be harmful, however our body has built in defenders/fixers. After all, our bodies are complex systems is a web of interlinking biological systems that have built in backups, fixers, redundancies, etc. This complex system was built over millions of years, and that thought turned the corner of my thinking. I realized that something like cloning fails for the same reason that we will probably not find a cure for all cancers, because there are so many factors in place, that to control them all, even in their chaos would take godlike capacity. By our own modification, we loose many of those things which make our naturally evolved organisms robust.

I also found a flaw in my earlier postulation that if our body functioned as if we were age 20 all the time, we might not have the issues we have now. The problem traces back to the last point, that the web of interdependent factors are more complicated then changing a simple gene, also giving a lifeform the ability to never expire goes against the very fabric of evolution that brought us here in the first place, for evolution is made possible by the constant birth to offspring cycle to death, sometimes improving at each cycle (through variation and natural selection).

So, what’s the take away from all this? It is un-natural to think that we will live forever, accept that we all have a limited time on stage, and not squander the time we have.

Ironically, the move playing right now is, “The Bucket List.” what lives on after your death? Memories of you and that which you have done in your life, those you have affected, changes you have brought. What do you want to be remembered for? Who do you want to speak at your funeral?

End each day with, “what good have I brought to the world today?” Live your life in service to others, time/youth is a fleeting thing, we lose it not only each day, but physically the time we have lost was better then the time that remains. [meaning we were younger in the time just passed]

A few other quotes I came up with just now

“sometimes you have to step out of the ordinary to transcend it” -me
“initiative is the first differentiator, skill and perseverance come second.” -me

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