I cannot remember the last time I had déjà vu. You know that strange feeling when something is happening and, for a few seconds, you are convinced you have been there before. Not somewhere similar. This exact moment. This place. This conversation. Something about it feels strangely familiar.
I used to get it occasionally. Now, nothing. Which made me wonder whether déjà vu disappears as you get older. Apparently it does seem to become less common with age, although nobody seems to have a completely satisfying explanation for why.
Maybe after sixty-odd years there are simply fewer situations your brain can convincingly pretend are new. Walk into another airport. Seen one. Sit through another meeting. Definitely seen that. Have another conversation about retirement, someone’s knee replacement or whether young people have completely lost the plot. Familiar territory.
Perhaps the ageing brain just gives up producing the special effects.
I have also wondered whether some of my déjà vu was connected to dreams. There have been times when something felt familiar but I could not connect it to an actual memory. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, maybe I dreamed this. There is apparently even a name for the feeling that something happening now was previously experienced in a dream: déjà-rêvé. So perhaps my theory is not completely ridiculous.
I like dreams. Good ones anyway.
There are mornings when I wake up, usually because I need a wee, and think, I want to get back to sleep because I want to get back into that dream. That is quite strange when you think about it. You are lying in a dark room, asleep, experiencing some world your mind has created, and then reality interrupts you and you want to get back into the other place.
Sometimes I manage it. Most times I don’t. The dream has gone.
Which makes me wonder whether, while we are dreaming, we really are existing in that place in some sense. It certainly feels real enough while we are there. Anyway, I am digressing from déjà vu.
Although dreams and déjà vu seem connected in my head somehow. One happens while I am asleep. The other is this strange flash of familiarity while I am awake. Both make you wonder how reliable our sense of reality actually is.
Then there is alien abduction.
I cannot remember hearing about many retirees being abducted by aliens. This seems surprising given the amount of time retirees should have on their hands. You would think they would be ideal candidates. Flexible schedules. Less chance of missing an important meeting. Plenty of time to recover after whatever the aliens have been doing up there.
Maybe aliens are ageist.
I realise at this point you might think I have too much time on my hands. I don’t. I am finishing another work stint on a tropical island and heading home in the next few days. I am really looking forward to it.
And this particular working experience does not feel like déjà vu. It feels more like fading ambition.
Not in a particularly sad way. There are simply things I once wanted professionally that I do not care about as much anymore. Getting further up the ladder. Proving something. Being recognised. Going back over areas of my working life where perhaps I did not quite reach whatever peak I once thought I should have reached.
I think we can spend a lot of our lives recycling old ambitions. Trying again. Fixing something. Having another go at getting recognition that you feel has eluded you. Seeking to be understood or fitting into a pair of shoes that were never your size.
But does it really matter?
I don’t think it does.
There comes a point where maybe ambition no longer has to be part of your vocabulary in a professional sense. There comes a time to realise that you don’t have to go back and finish every piece of unfinished business. Maybe it is just a good time for something different. For something new.
That interests me much more now. Creating new ambitions rather than trying to resuscitate old ones. Writing something. Making music. Going somewhere new. Spending time with people who matter. Learning something I know absolutely nothing about.
Having a really good dream.
Maybe that is one of the quieter changes that happens as you get older. You stop needing quite so many old ambitions to come true.
And maybe I don’t care whether the déjà vu comes back either. I don’t particularly need today to feel as though it has happened before. I would rather make something of today that I might actually remember.
And if the aliens finally turn up, I might just say it’s déjà vu.