Keep your brain sharp! Play board games, put together jigsaw puzzles,
do crossword puzzles and word searches, play Wordle!
We of a certain age have seen endless iterations of the headline above on TV, in newspapers, and in magazines such as the “AARP Bulletin.” Since I retired from teaching secondary science back in 2010, I have done all the activities listed in that headline, though I admit to not having tried Wordle yet. I kept up with my needlework hobbies and my love of reading, adding scrapbooking for a while and making jewelry with new friends online.
But then I saw this:
Learn a new skill! Learn to write with your non-dominant hand!
This headline nearly leapt off the page at me for three reasons.
First, I was facing major reconstructive surgery on my dominant (left) hand. I would be one-handed for weeks, and I would no longer be able to write in my journal as I had nearly every day for the past thirty years. Tasks like getting dressed, opening containers, and folding laundry had become major problems already. Even driving would be a problem for a while. Wouldn’t it be encouraging and even fun to learn to write with my right hand? The project and its process could easily take my mind of all the other things I would not be able to do for a long time.
The second reason the headline spoke volumes to me was that I grew up in a right-handed world. According to BBC, lefties currently make up between ten to twelve percent of the world’s population, making it unsurprising that the world at large caters to right-handed people. You can find an interesting article about lefties by scanning the QR code below.
The Egyptians invented scissors back in 1500 BC, meaning that it took humans 3,467 years before someone finally made a suitable pair of scissors for us lefties. But by the time that happened in 1967, my brain was already hardwired to use the same scissors the right-handed world used, using them with my right hand as well.
The scissors saga is an example of how societies marginalize and make invisible folks who do not share traits with the dominant culture. There are many other examples of the challenges lefties face, like worrying about bumping elbows with righties at the dinner table. As children, my younger sister and I spent many summers with the family of our four favorite girl cousins. At dinner, we three lefties sat on one side of the table, while the three righties sat across from us. At least the numbers were balanced. Our beloved aunt and uncle were both right-handed, and they sat at opposite ends of the table keeping six little girls on the task of getting through dinner.
An example that made life difficult for me in college classes was having to sit in those student desks made for righties. I learned early on how to make it through exams curled up over my blue books, those little blank booklets we bought at the college bookstore for writing the answers to exams. Back in my day, there were no multiple-choice questions. All exams required the student to compose sentences and paragraphs. Sitting at desks like the one I have sketched below made note taking difficult as well, and I took a lot of notes in my classes.
It can also be difficult to find sports equipment like left-handed catcher’s mitts and golf clubs. Then there is kitchen equipment like can openers and over mitts. And I cannot forget Western dining etiquette in which the table setting has the fork on the left, and the knife and spoon on the right of the dinner plate. The right-handed diner, who is expected to be eating some kind of meat that needs to be cut up, cuts his pork chop with the knife in his right hand and the fork in his left hand. Then to eat the pieces of meat, he switches the fork to his right hand. At least that is one thing I never had to deal with being slightly ambidextrous and therefore able to use the knife with my right hand.
While studying organic chemistry, it bothered me to learn that molecules that rotated to the left, or in the counterclockwise direction, were called “sinister,” while those that rotated clockwise were dubbed “rectus.” If you know anything about Latin roots of our English words, you will realize that rectus and dexterous both refer to something that is right and good, while sinister means evil.
The third reason I was intrigued by the idea of learning to write with my right hand is because the biologist in me has always been interested in brain research. I have become even more interested since my husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. This interest in brain science overlaps with my interest in learning how to draw. When I read that headline, I immediately went searching for my copy of Betty Edward’s book entitled The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain—A course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence. The author is a drawing and painting instructor who delves deeply into the science of how the two hemispheres of the brain work, both separately and together. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, while the right hemisphere controls the left side. The right mode’s characteristics include being nonverbal, synthetic, spatial, intuitive, and holistic, all characteristics that lend themselves to artistic expression. The left mode—the one that controls the right side of the body—is verbal, analytical, symbolic, temporal, digital, logical, and linear. See the photos below.
These images are from my copy of this wonderful little book first published by artist Betty Edwards in 1979.
The image below is from page 44 which compares the characteristics of the right and left modes of our brains. Photos by Carolyn Nevin.
I have been writing in my journal with my right hand since January 7, 2024. In the past several months I have sensed a difference in how my brain feels when I am writing with that hand. I feel different. I tend to try to economize on words, partly because the physical act of writing is slower. I find myself thinking more deeply about what I write, though I am not saying what I write as a righty is superior to what I wrote left-handed. It just feels different, and it is fascinating.
Photo by Carolyn Nevin
I also signed up to write postcards to voters in swing states to encourage them to get out and vote on November 5. I chose to write to Pennsylvania voters, since I was born and raised near Pittsburgh. I finished all 200 of the postcards I received while visiting with my husband over the past few months, and I wrote every one of them with my right hand.
Photo by Carolyn Nevin
The Edwards book has been in print since 1979, but I bought the revised edition back in 2005, shortly after my mother passed away. The book is truly a gem and revisiting it has been a joy. I stopped working with it when I was only one third of the way through, but now I have a lot to look forward to. For example, I will attempt some of the exercises with both hands to see which one I prefer.
The next exercise I attempted was the upside drawing shown here:
This is from page 58 of the Edwards book. It is a drawing by Pablo Picasso of Igor Stravinsky from 1920. Photo by Carolyn Nevin.
Here’s how it works. The student turns the image upside-down and draws the picture in sections, paying attention more to lines and shapes than to the whole image that she is trying to copy. Once you get started, you will feel your brain make the shift from left mode to right mode. I have had this experience before while doing other creative projects, but I never realized what it was. Here are my results from two attempts at upside-down drawing. I drew them both with the original picture upside-down:
The drawings above were both done with the pages upside-down.
The Afterword of the book is called “Is Beautiful Handwriting a Lost Art?” There are samples of beautiful calligraphy, including Chinese calligraphy. I studied Chinese in high school and in college before I became a scientist, and one of the things that drew me to the language was the beautiful calligraphy. I have never tried to learn it the traditional way using a brush and ink that one grinds on a stone, mostly because it was designed for right-handed brushwork. The beautiful, proportioned strokes can only be made from left to right. In other words, one must pull the stroke across the paper. It would not work to push it from left to right with one’s left hand. I have already gathered my materials together to begin practicing with the brush held in my right hand.
There was another challenge I encountered while reading about handedness. The writer asked rhetorically, “Why stop at learning to write with your non-dominant hand? Try writing with both hands at once!” I tried it, and it really is fun. My latest plan is to never stop learning new and interesting things. Betty Edwards must be of the same mind. I wondered if she was still alive and was pleased to discover she is 98 years old and living in San Francisco. You can still learn how to draw using her methods. Just visit www.drawright.com and see!