We went out on a family tracking walk yesterday. The snow was perfect and there were all sorts of tracks for my son to investigate. It’s fun being outside with him and seeing the landscape through his eyes. One of the neat things we can learn from children is the idea of vu-ja-de. It’s the opposite of deja-vu. Where with deja-vu you’re in a new situation but have a feeling you’ve been there before, with vu-ja-de you can be in a familiar situation, but you experience it as if it’s completely new to you.
As adults we’re trained to categorize and filter information coming into our brain. This is a good thing, because there is so much information coming at you all the time that if you didn’t filter most of it out, you wouldn’t be able to function. But it’s important to be able to turn off the filter when you want so that you can experience new aspects of the familiar, or maybe even experience the familiar in a completely new way. This is valuable in tracking and survival, but also in relationships and just being a happy and productive person. It made my experience with my son yesterday much more fun.
