It is a hot, muggy, August afternoon in Virginia, but I’m not concerned with the weather. I am in the middle of a beautiful, blue lake crashing through the wake of boaters on a 1988 Yamaha Waverunner. It’s nothing fancy, the red stickers on the side have faded to orange, and my top cruising speed is about 25 miles per hour, but, again, I don’t really care. I’ve never ridden a jet ski before, and I feel like my 25 miles an hour is pretty damn fast. I am flying, trying to keep up with my boyfriend who is about ten feet ahead of me. Normally, my August days are spent at home, in my air conditioned living room, reading. But this August afternoon is different. I have decided to shake things up and go camping for a week with my boyfriend’s family. We are camping right next to this beautiful lake where I am on my first jet ski ride ever.

Bam! I am suddenly hit by a wave of emotion and memory. I ease up on the throttle just a bit and slow down, sinking into the water instead of skipping across the surface on a plane. I feel like I have just run into an invisible brick wall. I press my thumb forward, giving the Yamaha just a bit more gas, and I am once again trailing my boyfriend, but some metaphorical wave is still crashing over me, keeping me down, drowning in the undertow. I have been here before. I have been on this jet ski before.

I cannot recall ever having déjà vu as a kid, probably because, as a kid, I really wasn’t too concerned with it, or even really knew what it was. I probably just paused for a moment and then went about my day as if nothing had happened. But now that I’m older I find myself much more affected by déjà vu, and often times crippled by it. It’s not so much the actual experience of déjà vu that gets to me; it’s the questions that the experience leaves behind. What’s just happened? Why did I just have déjà vu? What caused it?

Google can only help me so much with these questions. Actually, Google isn’t really helping me at all – just giving me more questions, and no answers. There are quite a few articles and websites out there about déjà vu. Some of these websites say that déjà vu is nothing more than random brain synapses misfiring. Others say that it’s due to the slight, nanosecond difference between human eyes. One eye takes in the event first, and then, a millionth of a second (or some other equally infinitesimal amount of time) later, the other eye registers the event, causing the déjà vu effect. And, of course, there are other, seemingly less scientific ideas behind déjà vu. Some say that déjà vu is a sort of ESP phenomenon – the memory of previous glimpses into the future. There are some people out there who think that déjà vu is proof of the existence of another dimension. Others say that déjà vu is us remembering our past lives. And some people argue that déjà vu is an echo of dreams we don’t remember. But which one of these possible explanations is the right one?

I can kind of see the logic behind the echo-of-dreams scenario. The amount of time that humans spend dreaming over the course of their lifetime is about six years. That means, statistically at least, that we dream two hours a night. I think I remember about one dream I have per month. That means that there are hundreds of hours of dreams I don’t remember, so I guess it’s possible that my subconscious could be regurgitating bits of them back to me. But what exactly is in these dreams that would lead me to have déjà vu? Did I dream about riding a 1988 Yamaha Waverunner on Lake Kerr in Virginia during the first week in August? That would be one hell of a specific dream.

But maybe I did dream it. After hearing my boyfriend talk so much about the camping trip (in preparation for it), I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a dream about camp. I don’t remember having one, but, like I said, there are probably billions of dreams that go unremembered. But could my dream have really been that specific? Or maybe the generalities (me being on a jet ski in a lake) were similar enough in both my dream and in real life to tie the two together. Similar enough to give me that familiar feeling of déjà vu. But then this brings up all sorts of questions about the subconscious. Why remember this dream at this moment? Is it just because the circumstances are similar, or did I really dream that I was riding a 1988 Yamaha Waverunner on Lake Kerr in Virginia? If I did dream that… does that mean that my dreams can act as some sort of window to my future? I’m not so sure. I’ve never really believed that my dreams were trying to tell me anything. And I’ve never really tried to “decode” them. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

And I guess sometimes a misfiring brain synapse is just a misfiring brain synapse. Unless, of course, it isn’t. The logical side of me wants to believe that déjà vu is nothing more than that, a random misfire of something in my brain, a small brain hiccup, if you will. This is the same side of me that chooses Charles Darwin over Jesus, fact over faith. But I can’t just write it off like that. The logical side of my brain is screaming “danger Will Robinson, danger!” while the other side of me, the non-logical side, continues to wonder just what the hell is really going on. The problem is – the logical side of me is afraid of what the answer might turn out to be. I’m afraid that the answer I get won’t be logical, and it won’t be simple.
Because what happens if all this déjà vu is really a glimpse, an echo, of something out of one of my past lives? I find myself coming back to this point, although every fiber of my being screams that I must be wrong. I can’t possibly be remembering past lives because there is no such thing as a past life. Right?

Right?

I have a great aunt (who my sisters and I affectionately refer to as Auntie Rita) who says she is a natural clairvoyant. In my household growing up, this was not subject to interpretation, but rather a fact. I never gave it much thought, as is generally true with most “undisputed” childhood facts. At the same time, I never really believed her when she told me certain things, but I never really doubted her either. I remember, when my sisters and I were little, she told one of my sisters that she had an old soul – meaning that she had lived a number of past lives. At the time I thought nothing of it. Actually, at the time, I felt like it made sense that Lindsey, out of all three of us, would be the one to have an old soul. But that can’t make sense. It can’t make sense because, if it does, that would mean that past lives do exist, and that déjà vu might just be momentary flashbacks to them. And past lives just can’t exist. It’s just not logical.

Whenever I do get hit by one of these déjà vu experiences my brain automatically tries to reason it out by breaking it down into two parts: 1) the situation I am currently experiencing, and 2) my memory of the current situation. My memory of the current situation is entirely separate from the current situation itself. I can always distinctly recall having remembered the experience before, although I cannot recollect when it was I remembered the situation in the first place until the very moment I am having déjà vu.

I want to make sense of déjà vu… and I also want to avoid the question altogether. Most of all, I just want everything to make sense, to be simple and logical. But I’m not even sure if that’s possible. What if the right answer, the answer I’m looking for, isn’t the logical answer?

Maybe I want to rationalize déjà vu so much because of my Western upbringing. It feels unnatural to me that I should experience déjà vu so frequently… or that I should experience it at all. Sure, we’ve made movies about déjà vu and can chat with our friends about it, but it is still one of those things that is “strange.” Déjà vu is in the same boat as haunted houses. We talk about them, and God knows we make movies about them, and we may even know people who have “seen” a ghost… but they still fall under the category of “creepy” or “strange.” I think déjà vu is more likely to be socially acceptable in other cultures, probably because other cultures are more accepting of the “strange” and the supernatural. Take a look at the concept of past lives and reincarnation. Nearly every major religion in the world has embraced some form of reincarnation, except for Christianity (and although America is a culturally, racially, and religiously diverse place our country, and our ideals, were still founded by a bunch of dead, white, male, Christians). Also, in other parts of the world, there are prophets, wise men, and oracles. There are fortune tellers, and palm readers too – but we use them strictly as entertainment in carnivals.

And, as if my brain wasn’t addled enough, the middle of this paper has mysteriously vanished. What you were reading just a moment ago is all a recreation of what I believe I said the first time around. I was using another computer to continue to write my paper, having written the first half of the paper on my own trusty laptop, with the aid of my pen drive. I clicked the save button a number of times while writing the on the foreign computer. As a matter of fact, the computer even asked me if I were sure I wanted to save. I assured it that I did, in fact, want to save what I had just written. I even clicked the save button three times in a row at the end of my typing session, just to insure that my work was indeed saved. It was not.

My pen drive reveals no trace of the paper, and neither does the other computer, even after a thorough file search. My boyfriend, to whom the foreign computer belongs and who was the one to complete the file search (being a computer scientist), told me that I had “obviously not hit the save button.” I remember hitting the save button. I hit it multiple times… but if I did hit it multiple times then what happened to the middle of my essay?