There are days when I wonder whether the writer of Ecclesiastes was onto something when he sighed that there is nothing new under the sun. At the time, it must have sounded like resignation. A philosophical shrug. But lately, it feels less like an ancient lament and more like a modern diagnosis. I keep finding myself suspended in a haze of déjà vu — not in the mystical, life-has-a-hidden-meaning way, but in the weary, haven’t I seen this before? way.
Books that once thrilled me now feel like rewritten copies of each other.
Music releases sound like echoes of echoes.
Cinema has become a carousel of remakes, sequels, and universes.
Even ordinary experiences — a restaurant, a holiday, a new trend — seem to come prepackaged in familiar shapes.
It’s not that people have stopped creating. It’s that everything is arriving so quickly, and so often, that our senses no longer have time to recover. We are being fed variety in form but sameness in spirit. Modern life accelerates experience to such a speed that novelty becomes blur; freshness becomes fatigue; abundance becomes monotony. We consume so much that nothing has a chance to feel new.
Maybe the writer of Ecclesiastes wasn’t saying history repeats itself, but that humans do. We chase the same feelings, the same longings, the same “meaning,” but now we do it at the pace of the algorithm. And because everything is available instantly — every genre, every story, every perspective, every nostalgia revival — we experience the illusion of choice while circling the same emotional terrain.
What we call boredom might actually be overexposure.
Modern life has placed us under a constant spotlight of content — streaming, scrolling, listening, reacting — and our minds have quietly learned to protect themselves by numbing. When everything demands attention, attention becomes a scarce resource. When everything insists on being interesting, very little actually is.
Novelty used to arrive slowly.
A new book had to be discovered.
A film had to be sought out.
Music travelled by radio request, by cassette, by word-of-mouth.
There was anticipation — waiting, longing, wondering.
We had to go towards the thing we desired.
Now the thing comes to us.
Then its cousin.
Then its cousin’s remake, prequel, reaction video, interview, and tribute playlist.
The experience collapses into repetition.
Even literature — once my refuge — has not been spared. I used to read four books a month, delighting in the diversity of voices and the unexpected twists of narrative. But over the last year, I’ve noticed a dullness creeping in. Stories feel repetitive. Character arcs predictable. Themes recycled. And as more people are encouraged to share their “story,” the publishing world is flooded with narratives that sound uncannily alike.
Authenticity has become its own genre.
Relatability has become its own cliché.
The intimate has become performative.
So yes — the déjà vu is real.
But maybe it isn’t because the world has run out of newness.
Maybe it’s because modern society gives us so much surface that we have no energy left to explore depth.
There is a line by the poet Adam Zagajewski:
“We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”
Childhood wonder works because it is slow, unstructured, and unmediated. But what happens when even childhood is drowned out by endless stimulation? What happens when the world arrives curated, edited, optimized for engagement before we learn how to sit in silence?
Algorithms do not reward novelty — they reward familiarity. They feed us what we already chose, training us to choose what we already know. The more we consume, the narrower our inner world becomes. And so déjà vu becomes not just an experience but a lifestyle — a quiet, numbing loop disguised as entertainment.
And yet, despite this heaviness, I still believe newness is possible. Not newness in the sense of unprecedented ideas — those are rare in any age — but newness in experience. Newness in depth. Newness in the way something touches us because we finally slowed down enough to let it.
Maybe what we need is not more content but more space.
Not more choice but clearer intention.
Not more stimulation but longer pauses.
Maybe novelty returns when we stop chasing it and start noticing what is already around us — the small shifts in a quiet morning, the texture of unhurried conversation, the pleasure of reading something slowly instead of urgently.
Perhaps Ecclesiastes was right — there is nothing new under the sun.
But maybe what he didn’t say is that there is always the possibility of seeing the old in a new way.
Of recovering wonder not through abundance, but through attention.
In a world of endless déjà vu, maybe the true act of rebellion is learning how to feel again.
Comments
Post a Comment