I grew
up in a home of music, medicine, literature and the arts. In addition to the
daily stimulus the environment provided to our budding brains, my parents made
sure that my siblings and I learned about exploration by reading. In fact, we
did not have much choice – only my father watched TV exclusively for tennis and
soccer matches, and there were no naked walls in the apartment. All vertical
spaces were covered with bookshelves, hanging wool or silk carpets, and
paintings.
So, I
started daily reading very early in my life. Often these were children’s books
my parents would give us to read and then tell them what the story was. Other
times, driven by curiosity, I would pick a book and try to read. We did not
understand most of what we read, but that tabula rasa of a brain found ample
space to store things. And over the years, uninvited and capriciously, these
silent words found their way to help us understand our life experiences.
One of
the books that influenced the 60 years of my life after reading it was “L’oiseau
Bleu” (The Blue Bird) by Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck. Premiered as
a theatre play in 1908, it tells the story of girl called Mytyl and her brother
Tytyl in search of happiness by symbolically pursuing The Blue Bird of
Happiness. Their search is directed and helped by a kind fairy called Bérylune.
After learning about material riches and opulence, brother and sister return
home only to realize that happiness was at home, all that time, in their
backyard.
I recall
my father telling us, at numerous crossroads of our lives “remember, the Blue Bird is in your backyard, do not look for it in
other places.”
And time
passed. And I eventually returned “home” to indeed understand what Maeterlinck was
saying.
... I
was reading about a new research that got the Ig Nobel Prize in 2023. This Nobel
Prize is an eclectic recognition of unusual studies that “make people laugh and
then make people think” about topics encompassing medicine, science and
literature. I therefore enjoy allowing my curiosity to learn about the research
honored through these annual Prizes.
The
Prize winning research tackles the rather intriguing and clever question about
the possible anti-thesis (or opposite) of the “déjà vu” phenomenon when the mind
is engaged in the same repetitive processes. The “jamais vu” (never seen) experience is not a new concept or
phenomenon, but exploring the association between repetitive action and jamais
vu may be new research. The authors (neuroscientists
from Université de Grenoble Alpes (UGA)) define the thesis and anti-thesis as
follows:
Repetition has a strange relationship with
the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe we have
experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving us with a spooky sense of
pastness.
Jamais vu may involve looking at a
familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Musicians have it
momentarily – losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may
have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disoriented or seeing it
with “new eyes.”
It is an experience which is even rarer
than déjà vu and perhaps even more unusual and unsettling. When you ask people
to describe it in questionnaires about experiences in daily life they give
accounts like: “While writing my exams, I write a word correctly like ‘appetite’
but I keep looking at the word over and over again because I have second thoughts
that it might be wrong.”
Ok, I am
not wearing my academic researcher hat as I quote the research since it is not
a new definition or observation. Indeed, in clinical psychology, “jamais vu” is
associated with aphasia, epilepsy, and some types of amnesia. In fact, there is
yet a third variant of this phenomenon defined as presque vu (almost seen) when we feel that something is on the “tip
of our tongue” even when we had not known that word, name or place before. Or, “almost”
remembering something that we may or may not have experienced before.
So, why
did this non-novel research got me thinking? In an interesting way, it felt
like déjà vu and jamais vu at the same time. Especially because it brought back
(what was the connection?) the guidance L’oiseau Bleu gave to my behavior –
that we often engage on journeys in search of beauty, love, comfort, etc
without first exploring what is around us. And, that we do not often realise that
what we seem to remember across our repetitive and repeating journeys were not
discoveries but wishes.
Or as
R.M. Rilke said
“The only journey is the journey within”
It is the
serpentine flow of that internal river that makes our journey an adventure. But
the comfort I most feel is when Rilke’s definition becomes a repetitive search,
not an experiment for discovery. In some ways, it is like looking in the mirror
with a purpose, time and time again.
And, as
I took yet another trip on that inner river while writing these lines, I repeatedly
“heard” my mother telling me and my siblings
“If you look for beauty, do not forget to
take it in you on your search. If not, you will never find it”
And what
a lovely search it has been!
January
11, 2024
© Vahé
A. Kazandjian, 2024
