It took a second for her to sort things out.

As PJ's elevator opened, the elevator directly across the way also opened. The other one was empty.

Its back wall was a mirror.

I can laugh with her at this story not only because she told it on herself but also since I easily could have been in her shoes. Or elevator.

Now, there's nothing wrong with looking like our mother. In fact, I feel rather comforted by it. Up to a point.

Contrary to what many people believe, however, we're not necessarily destined to look like our parents.

Some months ago, in paraphrasing a personal trainer offering advice to a woman with some stubborn pounds to lose, I wrote, "There's no escaping genetics." Upon reading this, medical geneticist Dr. Gail Jarvik called and left me a phone message: "That's not true!"

That misperception is widespread, said Jarvik, when we connected several voice mails later. Genetic testing and family history may help predict our risk of disease, but they don't ensure it. "We are not necessarily going to look like our parents," she says. "It's a shuffle of our genes."

With ongoing advances in genetics — or genomics, as it's increasingly called — helping identify which genes are associated with specific diseases, many people also believe not only that we will soon be able to know our medical destiny, but that we can't do anything about it.

"That really aggravates some medical geneticists," says Jarvik, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington's Division of Medical Genetics.

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Such misperception of genetics sounds — strange as this might seem at first — like the common use of the Sanskrit term "karma," often defined as "the law of cause and effect." Both karma and genetics are frequently used to refer to fate, something predestined. But "karma provides the situation, not the response to the situation," according my "Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen." Further, under "karma" in another book by the same publisher: " . . . future conditions depend on what we do in the present."

Substitute "genetics" for "karma" and we're back to Jarvik's point: The great potential in genomics lies not in the results of detailed genetic testing, but in what we do with that information.

"You need to work to escape your genetics," she says.

Jarvik counsels people who have had genetic testing, trying to tailor messages to the individual. Often, however, people who expect to hear about their cancer risk learn they're more likely to die from heart disease. Jarvik says most patients already know they could lower that risk by losing some weight.

"There's no escaping the 'Eat less and exercise' part," Jarvik says.

But each person has to find her or his own motivation.

Smokers are notorious for saying they can't quit, Jarvik says, yet many people do give it up after they get lung cancer. "It turns out they could quit."

Obesity "clearly has a strong genetic component, " she says, but that tendency can be challenged. So can body shape.

"There's no question that the weight distribution people have is inherent to them," she adds. But whether I'm more pear-shaped or apple-shaped, if I lose weight, I'll lose some of that distinctive form.

Jarvik knows such changes often aren't easy. "It's like anything in life. If you're not a good reader, you don't stop reading, you work harder at it. We do that with medicines: If we tried this one and it didn't work, we don't say, 'Medicines don't work for you' — we try something else.

"Just because your best friend runs three miles a day doesn't mean jogging is right for you. If I tried jogging and fail, I don't think, 'I wasn't meant for exercise.' I say, 'Now I'm going to try tae kwon do.' "

As for me, if I can't blame genetics (not to mention karma), I guess I'm left with that "eat less and exercise" part. And at least one way to check how I'm doing.

When the elevator doors open, what do I see?