DÉJÀ VU WHO
Tuesday Jan. 15, 2019
Every big thing that happens impacts us, leaving lasting impressions like that asteroid put a dent in earth we call Gulf of Mexico.
Many such encounters involve collision, pain and profound memory – which is not to say we are damaged goods forever because we were unjustly spanked at age 4 for something someone else did, but rather ‘big events’ of adolescence and adult life are scorched into our memory.
Workplace, school place or our place is ‘where it happened’. We remember ‘how it happened’. More importantly, ‘how it felt’. Whether a decade ago or yesterday we remember faces, words and feelings as if they were only moments ago.
Vivid as dreams, but not always dreamy. Why is that? Shouldn’t profoundly happy events go on ‘instant replay’ in our head as easily as negative ones? Well, they do!
Sometimes they’re just moments to enjoy, sometimes they are signals we should do something about them – follow up on them, pick up the phone or ‘collide’ with those people, places and events again. I think this is why we return to favourite vacation places – not just to re-visit the place, but to re-visit the feelings we had some other time, sort of re-living pivotal moments with people we enjoyed, remembering a conversation or meal or inter-action at a place in time with someone special. It’s the person and the interaction that matter more than the place where it happened.
Epiphanies too. When we have those ‘AH+HA’ moments we have those memories etched in our minds – who we were with, where we were and what was said. And, sometimes what never happened but should have …
