The Opposite Of Déjà Vu
There is an opposite to everything.
The Fragment
For the most part, we get the concept of déjà vu. Déjà vu from the French translation means already seen. For example, you show up for a gathering at a new co-worker’s house, you walk in the door…and you swear you have been there before. You can’t put your thumb on when you would have ever been here previously to this gathering. Yet, the house feels familiar.
Déjà vu has an intriguing opposite. The word is jamais vu. Jamais vu translates from the French to mean “never seen; the experience of being unfamiliar with a person or situation that is actually very familiar.” The most relatable way to explain jamais vu is this — remember when you would repeat a word over and over again until the word sounded odd and unrecognizable? That is jamais vu.
Think about the power of that action. Could we use jamais vu and repeat the word “hate” until we are unfamiliar with that word? What if we chanted the word “fight” until we laid down our guns and dropped our knives and forgot why we were holding them in the first place?
Into the Land of Forgotten Fragments this piece falls.
I drafted, wrote, revised, and fought with this piece for months. Still, it sits- a fragment of an idea. I never found words I felt powerful enough to express what I was trying to propose.
Yet, over months, I continuously returned to this concept. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find the magic words to make our world a better place? If it really was as easy as “Abracadabra! Jamais vu!”
