Like famous NY Yankee/NY Mets baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-blue-top-pointing-finger-on-forehead-4584178/

Deja Vu is French for “already seen.” You know the feeling; when you go someplace, or say something, or do something, and you feel you’ve done this in the past.

Is It Just Me?

I know I’m not the only person who’s felt that sensation. The Cleveland Clinic says that “97% of people have experienced deja vu at least once in their life.” Honestly, it feels a little freaky because I try so hard to remember when I was in the exact same situation-but can’t. The Cleveland Clinic calls it a “fleeting, false” memory that happens because “the brain misattributes a new situation as familiar” which creates a “brief illusion of memory.” (See https://health.clevelandclinic.org/deja-vu-what-it-is-. Generally harmless, there may be underlying medical conditions.)

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-tank-top-looking-at-the-mirror-3779766/

But sticking simply to the weird factor, has this happened to you? I’ve experienced it numerous times. Some may say my brain is playing tricks on me, as noted above. Others say it’s evidence of reincarnation. And there’s a group who may claim that there’s a glitch in the matrix, a distortion in the time/space continuum, or such. Whatever the reason, it’s unsettling.

Basically the Cleveland Clinic labels this feeling as a misfiring of the brain, a “miscommunication of two parts of your brain”, the memory part and the new experiences part. Obviously, this is a simplistic explanation.

Real, or Not?

But they can’t know for sure, now can they… Our brains are very complex, and there is so much we don’t know. Maybe these are real memories but our brains are so cluttered we can’t pick out the exact instance. Or, maybe our brains have jumped ahead and computed all the things that will happen in this moment, like a supercomputer can predict certain outcomes with success. And when the prediction is correct, it seems so familiar.

In the same way psychic powers, paranormal happenings, and unexplained phenomena can’t be absolutely defined and classified by science, I think the same can be said for deja vu. No one can see inside our minds, sometimes not even ourselves. Who knows what’s going on inside there…

Sounds like a great premise for a book.