À gauche

We are biased against the left.

Think about it: the dominant side for most people is called “right”. We label awkward behavior and ineptness as gauche – the French word for left. In Latin, sinister originally referred to the left. In Anglo-Saxon, the root for left (“lyft”) meant weak. To be a leftist has referred at different times in history to being evil, to being unstable, and even to being a communist. Humans have clearly harbored a longstanding prejudice against the left side.

This historical favoritism seems unfair. After all, at least ten percent of the world’s population is left-handed. Many other people have ambidexterous abilities or are born without any specific handedness. Yet cooking utensils and power tools are still typically made for the right-handed. And most scissors won’t cut properly when held in the left hand. Until not too long ago, we even made school children learn to write with their right hands.

So what have we got against our non-dominant sides?

Over the years, I have had occasion to face my right-sided preferences. There were the clavicle and sternal injuries in college and graduate school that inspired me to try new things with my left hand, such as tennis. There was the surgery on my right hand during residency training that taught me how to place iv’s and document in the medical chart as a leftie. There was the time working in rural Arizona when, just for fun, I taught myself how to throw with my left arm. These days, I will regularly brush my teeth, shave, or pour water with my left hand, rather than my right, as a reminder that both sides have potential.

The conscious experience of doing things opposite to their everyday feel is a positive one. I can feel my brain working differently. I can sense all sorts of reaction from diverse muscular-neuronal patterns and connections.

“Whoa!” the now unused right side sometimes exclaims. “What’s happening over there?”

Call me creatively conscious but I am sure that the experience is good for me – and for my brain. It is a form of calisthenics for my central nervous system. Although it’s not supposed to be possible physiologically, I can feel things buzz in my brain when I challenge it in new ways. The change helps me notice and address imbalances that have snuck into my daily ways of moving and being.

Not everyone has the luxury of symmetrical anatomy and capability; some of the people I admire most in this world have innate or acquired physical challenges that don’t afford them the luxury of two fully equipped and operational physical sides. It is amazing to witness these folks’ accomplishments. It is humbling to consider what less I can do with my own complete complement of extremities and physical components.

This inspires me to be less complacent with how things are and to exercise my abilities in dynamic and unique ways.

So consider trying something with a different hand, foot, or neuromuscular pattern, just as an experiment of change. If you are a righty, let yourself be gauche! It can be fun to pay more attention to our non-dominances. There are lessons to be learned in the infrequent, the ignored, and the sometimes forgotten abilities latent in all of us.