When I was young, I could only wink with one eye. Silly. Winks are only one eye. No, I mean I could only wink on one side. Yesterday, I managed to wink on the other side. It wasn’t a proper wink, with scrunched up muscles, deeper wrinkles and a crooked smile. The right lid closes with barely a scrunch. I closed the right lid and viewed the world only through my left eye.
But why am I winking at all? Yesterday, I pondered the fact that information from the left eye travels to the right brain, and the right eye to the left brain.
The Horizon documentary “The Creative Brain: How Insight Works” was broadcast on SBS recently. Mum fell asleep during it, so I’m using my notes to create some blog posts for her. While thinking about this right/left scenario, I tried encouraging my left eye and consequently my right brain.
The idea is, and the test results bear it out, that the right hemisphere of our brain is more likely to overcome our assumptions and produce creative insight. Information gathered through the left eye is more likely to trigger that insight than information gathered through the other eye.
It’s not something we normally notice because both eyes tend to focus on the space in front of us. We tend to look at one thing with both eyes.
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Today, when puzzling over a data problem at work, I suggested to myself that I should use my left eye. I didn’t mess around with winks, but perhaps the suggestion was enough because I was surprised at how quickly a solution emerged.
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Related posts
If you enjoyed my approach in this post, you might also enjoy:
- Some more thoughts on Creativity
- An introduction to Collage
Cherrie Zell 
What are your thoughts?