AMBIguity

I had a round of football yesterday night. To my surprise I didn’t do too badly. I have just recovered from the flu and should have been struggling for fitness. I still played at a quick pace for two hours straight. My movement was good and my shooting technically excellent. I regained my technique for striking the ball powerfully. And my left peg was not too bad either. If I keep my fitness up, I might join Xinyao for the marathon next year.

Now that I am done with the self-congratulation, I shall move on to my topic today.

Ambidexterity is the ability to use either hand – and to some extent the foot – equally well. The ancient Greek warriors believed that the perfect fighter must be able to use either side of his body with equal ease. It was not unheard of for a Chinese pugilist to wield twin blades in battle. Many modern sports stress the need to be proficient bi-laterally. Modern boxers, especially Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) exponents train their weaker side exclusively in order to become a more complete competitor. In football, players are now expected to be able to strike the ball with either foot. Sport scientists emphasize the danger of over-reliance on a favored side, as this can lead to injuries.

I have been trying to attain ambidexterity. It may come across as a waste of time and effort, as I am not a professional sportsman. However, my life experiences have imparted me with an understanding of the importance of over-reliance on any thing, in this case my right or left hand.

Being brain damaged made my life in poly a living hell. I was an engineering student and an abject failure. The lab work caused me endless difficulties. I could hardly remember how each component fitted into the overall system. Understanding a schematic diagram and tracing lines to find out faults gave me headaches. What my peers did in five minutes, I needed half an hour and by the end of it I could not guarantee success. To say I had learning difficulties was an understatement. Pattern and spatial recognition, solids manipulation, and algebra simply denied me understanding. Yet when I did sports, I suffered from no spatial problems. It could be that I was simply more talented when it came to sports. I was not quite sure and in the years to come I would have my answer.

During my army days I was lambasted by my sergeants for not being able to ’hit an elephant from five yards’. I am cursed with cross-laterality. I am left eyed but right-handed. I could hardly put my dominant eye to the sight when the butt on my rifle is set against my right shoulder. I could either switch to a left-handed stance (a danger, considering I was drilled to fire the weapon right-handed) or wear a patch over my left eye and use my right one to aim (which means the loss of depth recognition and the ‘shifting away’ of the target). Needless to say, I hated the range. I wished my instructors were more competent, but then again, this is our army we are talking about.

My misery continued well into my working life. Four years into engineering, I still didn’t know how to do my wire-locking. My hands-on was reasonably okay, but I could never remember if I had to twist the wire clockwise or anti-clockwise. I should have been expert at doing something so basic but even this eluded me. I could never figure where each panel or part fitted into the damn machine and my work life was an absolute nightmare. My pattern recognition and memory processes were very poor indeed. I made many mistakes; a few of which cost me dearly. I was hardly in full control of myself. Having to drag myself to a job I hated was one thing, being utterly confused on the job was quite another.

I do not have a driving license. Procrastination aside, I do not trust myself to drive on the road. In this cuntry, the steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle and I will find it hard to use my right eye to check on what is behind me. Besides, I sometimes get confused over left and right. Imagine stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake. I might kill somebody.

Being a contact sports enthusiast, I have had my share of injuries. Once I injured my right arm while playing in goal and could not use it properly for two weeks. Thankfully, I was able to do most tasks using my uninjured hand. I cannot imagine how much worse I would fare if I were like most people. I remember an ex-colleague complaining that she suffered strain from playing too much tennis. Her doctor advised her to use her off hand but she lacked the confidence to do so. She didn’t want to use the mouse left-handed because she feared she would make mistakes in her reports. I was trying my best not to snigger. It was quite evil of me, but I was in her shoes once and I earned the right to gloat.

While I can use my off hand well, I regret the fact that I am not truly ambidextrous. Besides his mirror writing, Leonardo Da Vinci was also known for his contribution to math, science and art. He was a bona fide genius and I believe his incredible creativity and intelligence could be attributed to his ambidexterity. If you can utilize both the right and left brains efficiently then it follows that you enjoy greater mental capabilities. Is it not possible that such well-rounded efficiency can unlock the brain’s hidden potential? According to medical science, we are only using 15 to 20 percent of our brains. Is it possible we have limited our potential by over relying on the dominant side, leading to atrophy of the other? If this is true, then it might be likely that this imbalance leads to further deterioration of our mental powers. Meditation is believed to increase mental awareness. Will combining meditation with ambidexterity training lead to superior intelligence?

On the flip side, ambidexterity training may cause more harm than good. When I first started to write with my left hand I felt nauseous and had to force myself to continue. As I did more things left-handed I found myself slightly more confused in my daily life. My directional sense suffered and I had to concentrate to keep my focus. Of course, this could be due to my low self-esteem, which was exacerbated by the abuse I suffered in the army. After all, footballers train to play the ball with either foot and they do not suffer from any apparent side-effects. Another possibility could be that I was brain damaged. I nearly died of illness when I was barely more than a baby. I can still remember the fevers that would not go down, and the desperate attempts of the medical staff to save my life by dunking me in a tub of icy water. Water was all around me, I could not breathe, I was hot and cold at the same time and every now and then they added more ice into my little tub. Years later I overheard my relatives saying I was brain damaged. They might be right. Until today, in spite of my best efforts the skill of swimming eludes me still. I go crazy once in a while and unlike most people I do not fear death at all. I feared many other things of course, but true fear of death does not take the stage. I suspect some parts of my brain are damaged and other parts have strengthened themselves to compensate for the deficiency.

I suspect I have always been left-handed. I could have been ‘changed’ when I was too young to have remembered it. My left hand has always been the stronger, although my right hand is more skilled from years of using it. Unlike most of the people who have undergone such changes, I retain my natural instincts. When I was a kid I always hopped on my left leg during ‘one leg’ games. I throw a better side kick on my left leg. Otherwise, my right leg has been dominant, although I am reasonably competent with either foot. I am comfortable using the chopsticks with either hand. I block better with my left arm and punch better right-handed (I suppose this is the norm for those who have been trained to fight right-handed.) I can write with either hand, although my right hand is faster. Same goes for shooting a firearm; I suffer no penalties in terms of speed. However, I can never use a weapon that demands I look through a sight that is attached to the right side of the casing and/or one that ejects spent cartridges to my right and back (I need a deflector to protect my face). Other laterally negligible tasks include combing my hair, brushing my teeth and other minor tasks. Lastly, I can only swing a baseball bat or badminton racket with my right hand. I am not perfect. Not yet.

A person who is ambilateral demonstrates a mixed hand preference. Some tasks he does with his left, others with his right. In my case this causes confusion. Being brain damaged I frequently experience difficulties deciding which hand to use and as mentioned previously, my directional sense is terrible. My damaged grey matter might have resulted in my speech impairment (I am not as fluent when it comes to oral communication and this is compounded by my stammering) and periods of concentration lapses. While some people are naturally ambilateral, my condition is involuntary. I have never learned to cope fully with my disability. Trying to use merely one side so that my brain does not get confused is impossible in practice. The tendency to use my off-side is simply too strong or impractical to ignore. I go through periods when both sides wax and wane in capability, sometimes independent of each other. For example, I could have a fantastic vocabulary on Monday and come Tuesday, have the linguistic ability of a Neanderthal. There seems to be a lot of frequent biochemical readjustment inside my head. This condition does not follow any predictable cycle and it seems random, like throwing a pair of dice. Everything is in flux and I could be making a subconscious effort on making the chaos into a linear and logical form. The consolation is that I am not suffering from bipolar disorder, psychosis, or some other mental aliment. I am just prone to non compos mentis. I cling to rationality because I cannot allow chaos to win.

This is no telling what would happen as I age. I can neither be purely ‘single-handed’, nor is the continuing ambilaterality a viable long term option. This is hope that I will beat this. I have learned more in this year than I had for most of my existence. I have become much more comfortable with meeting new people. (My social skills are still shite however.) For someone who learned English mostly on his own, I am suddenly making very fast progress in my diction. The standard is still far from acceptable but the learning curve is steep where it was previously gradual. I can remember information a lot better now – a great asset when it comes to preparing for my examinations. I can now think more critically and I have gained new insights into things. I have better spatial awareness and motor recognition when I practise my martial arts tao lu. I even realized the mistakes I have always made when I played football. While I still have periods of irrationality, the lucid periods that come, although brief, are crystal clear. They have always left me with a sense of loss once they have passed, as if I had some cosmic truth or insight within my grasp and when I open my hand it is gone like the morning dew. I remember very little, and I quickly forget even what I remember.

I am not an optimist by nature, but I feel I am on to something here. The Buddhists believe in sudden and gradual enlightenment. Perhaps what I am going through is sudden enlightenment, albeit in no sense religious. I am becoming, for what purpose and to what state I know not. The pursuit of true ambidexterity must continue. I know it is possible. Left and right are but discriminations and labels. I had a senior who is left-handed and wielded the blade brilliantly with his right hand. Your inherent handedness is of no consequence when you pick up a new skill. A person who learns to sew left-handed will be left-handed when he sews. The concept of lateral dominance is a delusion. Exorcising the ghosts of discrimination is the prerequisite of attaining perfection. It can be done. Has my senior not demonstrated with his bladework? The higher my mastery of ambidexterity the less confused I will be. The problems I faced when I first started were but growing pains. The war between the left and right must end in reconciliation. It must, if I am to be confused no more and release whatever is within me. I am becoming. As I write this, my mouse is on the left of my keyboard. I use it easily. If I switch the mouse over to my right and configure its buttons I use it perfectly as well. Perhaps I can split my brains and do different tasks simultaneously without losing efficiency. Nobody has been known to attain such perfection. It is highly improbable I can achieve that, but if improving my ambidexterity can unite my fragmented consciousness then I would be free, free to evolve, free to become. Maybe it will be futile in the end, but nobody ever becomes without struggle.

Wait. What if I am wrong? What if there my pursuit does not merge my shattered consciousness? What if the insights I have been having are merely delusions? The more I write the more I feel things do not make sense. There are some variables I am unaware of, some components that are simply wrong. The logic is all wrong. Could it still be right if it seems illogical? What about intuition? Does intuition take precedence over logic, or should logic come first? Are they irrelevant? Things are thus. And they will remain thus in spite of the presence or absence of conscious feelings and thoughts? Ambidexterity – what does it really do? Nobody knows for sure. Should I persist? Yes. No. I think I should. I don’t know why, but I should. Is my ambilaterality a symptom of a greater condition which is unbeknownst to even myself, or did the overall equation resulted from other smaller symptoms and causes? Neither? Both? Do I care? Am I supposed to?