I’ve been at home for about 3 weeks with minimal work. In doing so I had the opportunity to re-watch ‘The Da Vinci Code’ in order to be caught up if I where to go see ‘Angels and Demons’. (I did and it was ok.)

After watching it I started to wonder more about da Vinci. I discovered that he was ambidextrous, as I am. As I read more and more I discovered that some of the most brilliant minds of modern history have been ambidextrous, such as; Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Ludwin Van Beethoveen and Oscar Wilde. I’m not saying that I am brilliant, I’m far from it, but interesting non the less.

I bring this up because the more I read about being ambidextrous, the more I notice that there really isn’t much information on the subject. There was a study in 2006 stating that amdextrious people are more common to become bisexual and another in 1993 from Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift with a theory of why people might be ambidextrous is because of brain damage at birth. They have to map the brain differently to compensate for the loss of brain functionality. That’s it. There are is a lot of information about becoming cross-dominant (someone that has become ambidextrous).

This is odd as the left side of the brain controls people that are right handed, with accordance with math, logic, and language. The right side controls music, face recognition, and spatial abilities . It is said that the people that are ambidextrous have a much more neuron activity between the two side of the brian. Ambidextrous and left handed people have 11% larger corpus callosa (the bundle of nerve fibers joining the right and left sides of the brain) than right handed people. Which in theory means that ambidextrous people can use both sides of the brian with greater efficiency.

As a kid, I was ambidextrous favoring my left side. This was frowned upon in my family as Spanish is a language decendant of Latin. Sinistro, in latin, means left. Because of this I was taught to use my right more often. Due to this latin misconception I am not able to know if one of my forefathers had the same trait. Talking to my father, he revealed some cross-dominace but not to the extent to be called ambidextrous. He has no recollection of his father or grandfather having any cross-dimance or any sign of ambidexterity. Therefore halting my search of how far this trait goes in my family tree.

When I was 15 I broke my left arm/wrist in three places and had a cast for about 2 and half months. After that I lost some of the dexterity and cross-dominance. But slowly have tried to gain some of it back with use and sometimes force myself to do task only with my left side. Even though this has been the case I still use my left hand to clap, drive, even to cut and sometimes even switch hands while writing.

The past few months I have been a on quest to understand why things are in my family. I want to know the cause and the effect, but also why to decision where made. What where contributing factors?

I have had this insational apetite for knowledge and understanding beyond just the 2-D we see or been told. I’ve been studying the past. There’s a saying “Those that do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” But I would go once step further. It is not just how things became to be, but why. Decision are not just made. There are social-political-geographical reasons why one went left instead of right on the fork in the road.

I am some what conflicted because this is not part of my nature, or at least, I think it’s not. The more I look at my actions and decision it seems you can clearly separate the one that where done with my left side of my brain and those that where done with my right. It seems it it was two different people living one life. The question I have… Is this normal for those that are ambidextrous? Or is this a adverse effect of nurture versus nature? One type of personality is the real me while the other one has been forced unto me by my parents.

For some time I have felt that I have two types of personality. There is the super responsible one and the one that just wants to be creative and doesn’t care if he lives in the street as long as he does what he love. While the other, the super responsible, feels he would fulfill the wish of God by providing for his family (this is really the most Republican thing I have ever said), while the care free just wants to have a happy life, whatever that might mean. There really isn’t a middle ground for me. I love to be on the bleeding edge of technology, modern design, post modern art. Yet, I am captivated by the past. So much so that I have been reading and studying about Old Spanish (anything before the 15th century) Classic Spanish (16- 17th century) and Modern Spanish (18th to present), and no Spanglish is not a real or will ever be a language. I have also started to read a bit of “Gramática de la Lengua Castellana” (Spanish Grammar) by Antonio de Nebrija that was present to Queen Isabella in 1492 (which was later published as the first grammar book for the Spanish. Making it the official language of the Kingdom). Which in turn lead me to read on the Spanish Royal Academy which was established to preserve the proper Spanish language.

As you can see, I’m really on this, I want to learn more about my heritage, my family, and understand what they where saying in their wirtings… but try to understand what was going around them, locally and in the world to understand the context a bit more. For example; we need to understand that the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis where written during WW II to understand some of the context. I am trying to do the same with some of these things.

Or maybe I’m just going crazy? As this a contrast to the way I usually handle things. Usually I just go with the flow. Maybe I’m growing up?

It’s weird as I am not the only one looking at the past for the future. NASA is revisiting the Apollo Project from the 1950-60’s for the design for their new Moon lander missions. Intel went back to the Pentium 3 to create the Core architecture. Even the world is looking back at the Great Depression and trying to learn from it to dig ourselves out of this global recession.

I am not only trying to understand how I got here, but why. Maybe then I will understand where I am headed.