Biology, genetics and who we are

What does it mean to be you?

Photo by Ashraful Islam on Unsplash

You are here, reading these words, because of the simple fact that two people made love, aka had sex, aka a sperm cell fused with an egg cell.

This is the “simple” biology we learn about what it means to create a human being. Its of course not that simple and many of the aspects involved are not understood yet.

But, fun fact: its the egg cell that chooses the sperm, not how we always thought, that the sperm cell has the upper competitive hand ;).

Anyways, why I felt to write about this topic today is, because it is much more to being you, or being me, than the merger of these two biological tissues.

And I recently thought a lot about all the other aspects that come with it, being the mix of two other human beings.

In essence, we are a 50:50 genetic mix of our mom and dad. Genes are equally distributed, while mitochondria is what we get from our moms.

But we do not only get our genetic codes from our parents. We get the epigenetics, we get parts of their personalities, their quirks, their issues, traumata, gifts & talents.

And if we think back even more, we also get parts of what our grandparents were, cos they made our parents, then our great-great grandparents and so on, and so forth.

We are a mix of many different people AND our own, individual souls.

It’s a lot.

Does all this mean, we are more other people than our own individual beings?

Sometimes one might think so.

Especially if you add societal conditioning to it & what kindergarten, school, rules and laws tell us to be, do and not to be, or not to do.

…honestly, no wonder so many of us loose ourselves and don’t know who we are at our core essence.

But let me not speak about “us” or “we”, cos in the end, I can’t speak for any of you, just for myself.

I am recently wondering what it is that I want to do in my life. How I want to show up. What activities I want to do more of, which ones I want to do fewer of. And why.

And what value I want to bring to the world. And why. And how.

Funny enough, I always have done what I wanted to do: I studied biology, focussed on plant science, got my PhD, rediscovered art in the process, merged it to science, decided to start my own company & became a scientific illustrator.

No one told me to do that, least of my parents. That type of job barely existed, so I created it for myself.

And guess what? My dad is an artist, my mom works in a tumor genetics lab, but always wanted to work with plants.

So in a way, I merged my parents even there, while choosing and building my own path. And I couldn’t be more happy about it.

But now, almost seven years in, I am feeling that this is not it. Not anymore at least.

And this is not something that suddenly popped up. Its happening already since a while, it started to slowly creep in and take up time & space in my life.

You might wonder, what is it then that I want to do?

I don’t know. Not yet at least, and not clear enough yet. I am in a floating state, a let’s see-where-it-takes-me state.

It is quite different to when I did my PhD & decided: I will start my own company & become a scientific illustrator. Quite a clear plan. Boom, I just had to execute upon it!

Now, not so much.

But what I do know is, that I want it to be more artistic, more creative, more free, more connected to beauty & ease.

And that comes with a big bunch of doubts & internal issues, also generational blockages and traumata.

Why? Cos there is this thing around art and artists and the physical disability that runs in my family that somehow has a grip on me.

Subconsciously, not consciously at all. Cos I don’t mind having only 8.3 fingers, all differently formed.

But here is the thing that I mentioned before: its not just the genes we get from our parents & ancestors, its also all their issues & traumata & even past life experiences.

So I have started to dig a bit deeper into those, to understand what it might be that still inhibits me…