Heredity is a strange thing. It can give your child shimmering blue eyes, dark, long lashes, or a large, Roman nose. You can end up with a slender build, a large bust, a short stature, dimples, or male-pattern baldness.
Heredity can lead to some wonderful happenstances – like cousins who look like twins, or coppery red hair generation after generation. Heredity can also lead to some unpleasant issues, like rheumatoid arthritis, kidney disease, or congenital deafness.
It almost seems cruel that within a family tree, some have tendencies toward being healthy and robust, while others find themselves on the losing side of the genetic crapshoot we call life. Even among siblings and cousins, the genetic roulette wheel treats some to great fortune while leaving other family members in a completely different situation.
While I am one of those people who finds themselves with a variety of conditions that tend to be caused by the negative part of genetics, there are several traits I quite knowingly obtained from certain family members and ancestors, and those are fortitude, perseverance, stick-with-it-ness, sheer determination, and adaptability.
It is also true that there are other things I quite knowingly gleaned from my family tree. Some I have directly inherited, while others are believed to have a strong genetic component.
- Congenital hip dysplasia (Developmental hip dysplasia)
- Psoriatic arthritis
- Ankylosing Spondylitis
- Degenerative Disk Disease
- Crohn’s Disease
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Chronic Kidney Disease
- Scoliosis
- Spinal Stenosis
- Sjogren’s Disease
- Myotonic Dystrophy, Type 2
We have no control over having an inherited condition. It is as randomly assigned as eye color or foot size. However, what you make of these conditions is within your purview. No one denies that having chronic conditions which cause you pain and disability can be overwhelming. Personally, I think that finding those small moments of joy, that beautiful sunset, that walk with a friend, or a new bloom in your garden, are the small victories that make life worth living. It doesn’t reduce or relieve the pain, it doesn’t improve your mobility, cure your anxiety, or fix your medical issues, but for that brief moment in time, joy can be the best medicine there is.
Life does not mete out pain, illness, or disability fairly. Sometimes — most of the time, actually — we just have to make the best of what life has given us and find joy where we can.
