How To Fit Into Your Genes

Each one of us is a product of the genes from our parents. We get what we get. No choice in the matter.

So you have to make do with what you get. You can complain about your genes. But in the end, they are what they are.

I have been blessed with really good genes in a lot of areas, so I can't really complain. Both of my parents are very bright, and I inherited that innate intelligence. For which I am immensely grateful.

Both of my parents are also reasonably attractive people. Not models, but not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. So I am blessed with nice looks. I'm not a stunner, but you know what? I'm not sure I would want to be. There's a lot of pressure when you're that beautiful. To get over people's perceptions and get them to see past the beauty to the person. Still, I could have gotten bad looks from my parents, and I didn't.

I am, however, allergic to a lot of things. I think the jury is still out on how much of allergies comes from environment and how much comes from genes. But my mother and I are both allergic to feathers, so there's definitely something to the gene connection. My father and I both have hay fever. Is it fun to have these allergies? Not particularly. But there are worse things I could be saddled with.

The only really bad gene I got is a tendency toward obesity. There are several members of my family - my extended family included - that are seriously overweight. I myself weighed more than 200 lbs in college. Though I carried it all over my body, so I didn't look as heavy as those who have a large waist. This gene means that I have to watch what I eat and get plenty of exercise. Otherwise, the pounds pile on. It's not an ideal gene to have. But it is what it is.

The one other "negative" gene that I got from my mom is premature gray hair. But here's an example of embracing what you get. For 22 years, I colored my hair. I started going gray at 17. At 20, I started coloring my hair. Now I'm hardly the only woman who colored her hair for many years. But I could have been really unhappy about getting gray hair so early in life. But even though it wasn't particularly my first choice to get gray hair so early in life, it's at least a beautiful silver gray. It's not a battleship gray. It's not a washed out yellow gray. It's bright and shiny. So when I hit my 40s, I thought to myself, "Well, I could continue to color it or I could just let it go." The fact of the matter is that at some point, when your hair gets too gray, it doesn't really color well anymore. It is no longer possible to have a hair color that looks even remotely natural. So I just decided to embrace my "bad" gene and let the gray come in. Sometimes I think that someone who is meeting me for the first time probably thinks I'm older than I am. But I'm not sure that I really care about that.

So, my genes are my genes. And I've learned to embrace them all. After all, what choice do you have?