Memory, Deja Vu and the Objective Correlative

Memory you know is the key to all our emotions.
As you grow older while memory weakens in the domain of the immediate present, it becomes strangely persistent regarding the past. 
I say strangely because the persistence is insidious and seems to originate from the sub-conscious. 
The most commonplace of these calling cards from the past is the phenomenon know as Deja vu.(more correctly Déjà vu). 
Deja vu in French means "already seen" an is defined as "a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, whether is has actually been so experienced in the past or not". Somewhat like the unending reflections in a hall of mirrors.       
As I grow older my  Deja vu moments, have not only become more frequent but have changed texture.
Deja Vu these days for me has changed from the sensation of a repeated experience to a repeated emotional landscape. 
For example when I take a particular turn on my way home with the sun shining at a particular angle I experience the same identical sense of eager anticipation about the future. The sight of a railway platform at dusk invokes a fleeting but deep sense of despair. Such triggers are not restricted to the domain of sight but also related to other senses like smell, touch and taste.
Psychology textbooks explain Deja vu as the brain reacting prematurely to a particular object by creating a sub-conscious picture of the entire experience before it is consciously registered, thus fooling the conscious into believing that it is a repeat of an experience in the past.
The textbook explanation of a premature ejaculation (so to speak) of the sub-conscious might hold true for Deja vu that is situation related. However, I think, there is more than what meets the eye when Deja vu triggers a set of emotions.
I believe, the explanation for this phenomenon comes not from the science of psychology but from the domain of art. The "objective correlative" is a tool that writers use to evoke emotion int heir readers. The term was first used by the poet TS Elliot in his essay "Hamlet and His Problems". Eliot wrote "The only way of expressing emotion is in the form of an art is to finding an "objective correlative", in other words a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked"
Elliot's insight can perhaps explain the difference between popular art and the avant garde. Popular art uses already established formula for evoking a set of acceptable emotions while the avant garde creates not just new formulations for the existing set of acceptable emotions but formulations that create a new palette of emotions.
So what am I saying? That I am becoming, as I growing older, a set of formulas evoking a set of emotions? A row of buttons that get pressed in a set sequence? Perhaps there is a life lesson to be learnt here. That you are in the danger of becoming the prisoner of a set pattern of behavior (habits) and evoked emotions (gratifications) as you grow older. If you have to break free you have to do what the avant garde does in any walk of life: take risks and overcome the fear of failure. Not for the lure of success but simply to better express life's joy.
Remember even the dying flame struggles to flare brighter.