Not Knowing

I recently read Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, digesting it in tiny two-and-three page bites. In the first couple of chapters he writes about the structure of DNA, relating in great detail the amount of genetic information locked within our biological hardware. His analogy is made through books. There are 200 billion binary digits (bits) worth of information on only one strand of DNA...in more human terms that's the equivalent of 4,000 500-page books.  I just finished reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (560 pages), which took me about a month to read.  At that rate, it would take me almost 350 years to read the information encoded on just one strand of DNA.

If you read every single book in even the largest Barnes & Noble (assuming approximately 150,000 books) and memorized it all (every recipe in every cook book, every line of every poem, every word of all the histories of every country on the planet), if you listened to every song and memorized every note of every opera, concerto and rock and roll anthem that's about the equivalent of 100 strands of DNA.

The genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA. Humans (and mice) contain approximately 3 billion base pairs. Except for mature red blood cells, all human cells contain a complete genome.

In other words, there's a lot going on in there that we just don't know yet.

I almost drowned when I was 11 years-old. I was swimming in a small lake up near the Wisconsin border. I'd gone up there with my friend Phillip's family for a day trip. Moored at some distance from the shore (the number I remember is one hundred yards (about half a city block) though I can't say with total certainty) was a small raft with four diving boards at varying heights. You couldn't dive close to the shore, but at that distance the lake was probably close to 20-feet deep.

I'd waded out to about waist high, where the drop off was more than twice my height. I'd spent some time in pools as a kid, and even swam in a race or two (I was much better on land where I'd won my share of park-district sponsored 50 and 100-yard dashes).

About halfway to the raft a pain shot through my right hamstring as if I was a speared trout. I reflexively reached back with both hands and immediately sank completely below the surface and took in water. I gagged and sank to the bottom where I became entangled in thick seaweed.

The burning in my leg intensified and my flailing left foot became tangled in the seemingly reaching blades of the seaweed. My gasps of panic pulled more water into my stomach and lungs.

I was drowning.

I could see the surface but was not nearly tall enough to reach it. I'd probably sank some seven or eight feet (a distance that my 11-year old mind exaggerated into 100 feet).

I stopped moving. I don't know why. My foot became untangled. I let go of my cramped hamstring and slowly floated to the top.

I surfaced spitting and sputtering and looking for the lifeguard who had to be, must be swimming toward me at this very instant to rescue me.

No one saw me.

I circled my arms in figure-eights and tread water until I caught my breath. I was much closer to the platform than the shore so I paddled strongly,

Is my DNA encoded with that memory? Did that rush of chemicals racing through me at the time mutate a few cells?  Can my physical being be infused with the fear that I felt when I thought I might die?  Is that why children are afraid of the dark?  Is it some deeply ancestral recognition that we are  little more than soft tissue attached to fragile bones?

It's frustrating to have more questions than answers.  I'll just keep reading (and writing) until the answers present themselves or I've come to terms with not knowing.