Deja Vu All Over Again

Every semester I give a survey to my classes asking them about the kind of paranormal things they believe. The one thing they almost always say they have experienced is déjà vu. Now, it may be that they answer that way because of how the question is worded. I ask them if they have ever had the feeling that they have done something before. A few people have suggested that I should reword the question to ask whether they have ever had the feeling that they did something before and that they thought it meant they had lived in a previous life. I just might do that the next time I give out my survey.

Some people think that every experience you have ever had is encoded in your memory somewhere. That might be the case although there are others who think that every time you retrieve a memory you reconstruct it in a way similar to doing a “save as” with a computer document· If that’s the case, and there is a lot of evidence to support the idea, then you can never get back to your original memory. Still, the emotion connected to a particular memory may be triggered and that gives us the feeling that we are experiencing something again.

I often hear people say that they wish they could go back to an earlier part of their life and do things over knowing what they know now. They tell me that they would do things differently if they were given the chance. That would probably be the case if they knew what they know now, but if you had things to do over without that knowledge you would do everything that same. Who you are at a given time determines the decisions you will make. I for one wish I could change some things I’ve done, but I realize that if I had it to do over again I would do things the same. My decisions were based on who I was at a particular time. It’s sometimes a tough pill to swallow, but we would never learn all the lessons we need to learn if we didn’t experience certain things.

Our interactions in the world are based on prior experiences. We can’t approach anything without our prior knowledge and expectations. As I’ve said before in previous blogs, we are often prisoners to our memories. We can rehash events over in our head. We can replay those tapes, but nothing we do will change the past. All we have control over is how we will react to future events. This is why it’s important to learn from difficult experiences. If we learn from our past and can make peace with it, we won’t be destined to repeat the same things over and over again.