Would you want to know?

I have blogged about this before. If you could do a genetic test to find out if you are likely to get an ailment and die of it, would you want to know?

I am still up in the air on this one. I was interested to read about a 21 year old woman who has the BRCA 1 gene, watched her mother die of cancer, but has decided she doesn't want to know. Her choice is to live an  unstressed like without the burden of the knowledge that she could die of cancer and what it would be like.

I can completely understand that point of view. Just because we can learn about our medical and genetic make up, do we have to learn it? I mean is there a benefit to living in ignorance and letting life happen around us with out having to learn what might or might not happen to us?

Why are we supposed to learn to see what the future brings? I have never been to a palm reading or a fortune teller or anything. I haven't really wanted to. Isn't it better to have life unfold as it may than to plan and learn and change ourselves to compensate for what we learn?

Hindsight in light is always 20/20 - we always look back and think back how we could have done better or differently or improved the outcome. But is it really to our benefit to think how we might have done things differently? Then we spend too much time ruing our decisions.

This would complicate my life immensely. If I knew then I would have too much time to over plan my life which would cause me to spend time ruing my decisions and over thinking everything.

I don't want to know.

Planning ahead

For a mere $20 you can purchase an ObitKit and write your own obituary. Its the latest thing in the American rate race, keeping up with the Jones's. I mean why not? Your funeral is the biggest party of your life and you don't get to attend. If you write your own obituary you can advertise yourself and establish your brand for eternity (sorry my inner marketing person kicked in). You won't need to be the family member who brought the disgusting fruit cake to Christmas dinner for 20 years, you can become the family member who went on exotic vacations and lived life to the fullest.

It actually makes sense. What do you want people to remember you by? What they can remember or what you can remember? My family is a bunch of planners. My grandmother prepaid for her funeral (and got a really good deal because she didn't need it for 20 years), drafted her death notice, and planned many details. It was much easier on the rest of us. And we knew what she wanted in the paper.

Think about it, if you died tomorrow (not that you are but its the principle here - work with me), what would your family write about you? That you didn't go grocery shopping with reusable bags or were always the one who left the iron plugged in when you went on vacation? Or had really bad dandruff (okay I'm stretching here). But this is your chance to leave things your way.

I think of it as a logical extension of your medical proxy, next comes the funeral and the death notice. Start planning. Make it all about you. Just make sure the wake is held while you still can attend.