Pseudo Deja Vu

Pseudo Deja Vu

Pseudo Deja Vu

I live fairly near to this quaint food place (I don't know if I should call it a restaurant) where I am writing this post. In the few minutes that it took for me to walk here, I realized that I was forcing deja vu.

We all know that deja vu is "the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time." It's the feeling that you've seen something happen that way before.

Well, pseudo deja vu is, I believe, when you force it. I was forcing deja vu when I walked here because it's exactly what I did the day before. Pseudo or forced deja vu is doing something exactly the way you did it before to achieve the feeling of deja vu. It's what you do when you stalk or when you want to be stalked: you stick to a schedule, a routine, and do it the same way every single time.

But this post is not going to be about stalking. No. I am going to talk about the many times that we force deja vu.

Two quotations come to mind when I think of this.

The first is from Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The other is from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

I understand that these two are totally different, but bear with me on this one.

Sometimes we do things even when we know they won't work. Sometimes we do things even though we know it's wrong. We convince ourselves that things will turn out differently, but who are we kidding, really? When you do the same thing over and again, it's going to end up the same as it ended up the last time. We become like dogs chasing their own tails. It's an endless cycle of, well, that's just it. It's a cycle.

But why do we do it? Do we hope for change? Of course we do. We hope things become different. But even more, we hope to feel that same feeling we felt the last time (so many feels). Someone once asked, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" And someone also gave the sentiment that "I wish I could forget I read this book before so I could read it again as if it were my first time." Do we secretly hope that we could undo the past and make it the first time?

Do we secretly not want to deja vu (yes, I used it as a verb :p)? I don't know where this post is heading, but I do know that sometimes we are so caught up in the before that the after becomes inconsequential. We live in the past and long for the future that we are hardly ever present. Sure, when you live in this world for too long, everything seems to become familiar, but it's not exactly the same.

So it's your call if you want to pseudo deja vu. It's your call if you want to do the same thing over and again without changing anything. You can choose to be insanity or you can choose to be the 10,001st way that actually worked. (But come on, you want to go all the way to 10,000 before you change?)

In Inception, Leo (because I'm too lazy to search his character's name) had this spinning top that let him know if he was in the real world or not. My spinning top that reminds me that this is only a pseudo deja vu is that I came here a couple of minutes later than I did yesterday, did not order the same thing, and actually wrote a post. So it's only a pseudo deja vu. Nothing is ever really the same.

Pseudo Deja Vu

Pseudo Deja Vu

Pseudo Deja Vu

PS I believe I don't make sense right now. :p