ANYTHING

An incident in the TV series Bones touched a chord with my own reality and reminded me that... .. No matter how planned or unplanned a person is.. Life has its own way of unfolding and the odds are not in your control..

In the of Bones S06E16 ‘The Blackout in the Blizzard', a troubled Angela (Michaela Conlin) arrives from a doctor's appointment. She finds out that she’s an LCA (Leber's Congenital Amaurosis) carrier. Although LCA affects 1 in 80,000 people, it's an autosomal recessive disorder. If both parents are carriers, the child has a 1 in 4 chance of getting both copies of the recessive gene and having the disorder, which causes blindness.

If Angela's partner, Hodgin (TJ Thyne) is a carrier too, it means their baby could be blind. Hodgin’s reassures her that the chances of that are slim, its only 25%.

Hodgin gets his test done only to find that he's an LCA carrier too. He breaks down and tries to understand why this happened to Angela and him.
He wonders to a colleague that “you hear that something has a one in a thousand chance or one in 10,000”. The colleague replies that “But I guess it's like the lottery, right? Someone always wins, you know? “

Then as Hodgin tearily breaks the news, Angela embraces him. Hodgins remarks that still there is only a 25% chance of blindness. Angela says the math is what did them so not to bother her about their chances.

Hodgins remarks that he will take up piano since he can't look through microscopes with his kid, atleast they'll play piano together. He advises Angela to take up sculpture. Angela thinks Hodgins is getting ahead of himself and says there is only a 25% chance of blindness. She then smiles, realizing what Hodgins has done. He gave her the optimism that they still may have their chance.

Hodgins and Angela end the episode with the upbeat attitude that they can handle anything, as long as they do it together.


Their situation resonates with ours… I mean what were our odds.. However we too fell into a particular zone of sorts.. And this makes our minds oscillate between thoughts such as

We might have wanted it so badly from when we were kids
or we may have never really thought about it at all,

We might think we had done something in the past for this to happen to us
or we may think that we’re going through the ordeal for becoming stronger,

We might think we deserve it more than everyone else who has it
or we may feel that the grapes are sour and we’re lucky without it

And when we are tired of taking sides, we can’t remember which of these thoughts bothers us more. Its like what Marilynne Robinson said

“When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.”

However all this makes me realize one thing that I wouldn’t want 'us' to forget, ever

“TOGETHER, WE CAN HANDLE ANYTHING”

and that's all that matters...