You step into a café, the smell of coffee in the air, the hum of conversations blending with the clatter of cups. You see the barista giving coffee to a woman. Have I seen her before? The same double-shot cappuccino ordered by the same lady with that red dress, and the curly haired barista smiling with his teeth showing. You feel an eerie sense of discomfort. Wait… hasn’t this happened before?
If you have been listening to Olivia Rodrigo, you might’ve come across a term called ‘Deja Vu’. What is Deja Vu then? Deja Vu isn’t a word having an English origin. It has French roots that literally translates into “Already seen”.
Thus, Deja Vu describes the feeling that you’ve experienced or lived through a situation before, even though it’s happening for the first time. It’s almost like a glitch in the matrix. But don’t worry, Deja Vu isn’t a glitch. It occurs when something goes wrong in the part of the brain responsible for processing memories and emotions, scientists like to call the “Median Temporal Lobe”. This region helps form, store, and recall memories. When these areas malfunction, they can create a false sense of familiarity, causing a feeling that you’ve experienced something before, even if it’s happening for the first time.
Scientists believe that Deja Vu may happen when there’s a mismatch in the brain’s ability to register information. The brain takes in information and stores it either as the short-term memory—that is responsible for registering information that is happening right NOW—or the long-term memory that stores information that has already happened in the PAST. If, by any cause, the short-term memory and the long-term memory registration goes out of sync, information happening right NOW gets registered in the long-term memory, and it feels as if the NOW has already been in the PAST. This glitch leads to an overreaction in the brain, which signals that the event or situation feels familiar, even though it is not.
Some myths say that Deja Vu is like a past life, but proof regarding these speculations is yet to be discovered. Believe me, they might sound like a cliché but as long as there is no proof, nothing is impossible. People often misinterpret deja vu as having something to do with the multiverse, so in another universe that contains a version of you, when that person has done the same thing you were doing, it triggers deja vu. This is the fun part about human glitches, you can choose which theory to believe.
In conclusion, Deja vu is an everyday experience. And it’s just some mishap in the brain. Or is it? Could it be that somewhere, some version of you has already seen the woman drinking that coffee from the barista? Or, it could have been seen by you in your past life. Wait, that woman isn’t a ghost, is she?
Purnima Baral is a grade VII student at Triyog High School, Kathmandu.
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