It’s Groundhog Day – Over and Over Again
Yesterday, Feb 2, was Groundhog Day, and I was delighted to hear that Punxsutawney Phil, that legendary rodent weather forecaster, did NOT see his shadow, meaning that spring will come early this year. After the long and intense winters of the past two years, that is good news indeed!
But the biggest joy of Groundhog Day was watching the movie of the same name, which has become an annual tradition for Helen and me every Feb 2. Groundhog Day is a brilliant, funny, imaginative, poignant and spiritually-meaningful film, full of rich insights about how we live and learn and evolve into better human beings. For those unfamiliar with the story, it centers on an egotistical and cynical TV weatherman (also named Phil, and played by Bill Murray), who goes to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the Groundhog Day event, but then gets trapped in a personal time warp where Feb 2 keeps repeating itself, many thousands of times over many years. For a long time, his reaction is resistance, anger, reckless abandon, manipulation, despair, even suicide, to try to change his situation. But no matter what he does, every morning he wakes up and it’s still Groundhog Day, over and over again. He’s stuck, until he realizes that he can change himself, through self-awareness, love, serving others, and being happy in this now-moment.
For anyone on a path of personal growth – really all of us, whether consciously or not – this movie is very relevant, no matter if one’s orientation is spiritual, religious or psychological. Buddhists talk about samsara, a cycle where we keep reincarnating into another human life and then another, slowly freeing ourselves from ignorance and ego through our actions and awareness, learning what we need to, until we find enlightenment and awaken to a deeper reality where everything in the universe is connected to everything else. Catholics talk about purgatory, a spiritual nether-world where souls must remain until they atone for their sins and earn their way into heaven. And, according to psychotherapy, we keep repeating the narrative of our past until we have a breakthrough and can begin to dissolve old patterns.
Whatever framework or lens one uses, the reality is that each of us gets trapped, to one degree or another, in repeating patterns that do not serve us well – patterns of thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, memories, and relationships that we relive day after day. This is certainly true for me. Although when I woke up today it was a new calendar day, February 3, I quickly found myself still stuck in the day before, still reliving what had happened the day before, and the days and years before that, in terms of my thoughts, beliefs, etc., although of course a few relatively small details may have changed. That’s what happens in our lives.
But the good news is that we are not doomed to stay trapped in this way for the rest of our lives, because as humans we have the powerful resources of compassion, creativity, determination, caring, and finding meaning in our lives. And perhaps even more powerful is hope – hope that, just as the bleakness of winter will inevitably yield to spring, we can change, if we hang in there and keep going. As my mother used to say, “Falter, but don’t fall.”
We hunger for change, even as we so strongly resist it. What I’ve come to understand is that change is not about becoming someone different, but being more grounded and embodied in who you really are. It means becoming your best and most authentic Self. We can change, and we do change, every day, even if some days the change is imperceptible. But there are several ways we can consciously involve ourselves in the process that will support and assist it. Our work begins with developing awareness of the patterns, and then learning to be with them tenderly, with ever deepening self-compassion. Next, we focus on creating a vision of how we want to be, and set an intention for that – not as a distant goal to judge ourselves by, but a commitment to the journey toward that, and however far along we get is okay. As we shine a light into our dark and unconscious places, we expose and shed waste/debris, an undertaking of self-purification and release. Forgiveness – of oneself and others – is an important of this letting go. Then we can dig deeper, to connect with the foundation of our heart and soul, to our fundamental identity (call it Source or Self), and find our hidden power that creates and propels change
That is a very brief summary of a big process that unfolds, session by session, in the spiritual counseling work I do, as well as in other spirit-centered healing approaches. It is the work of a lifetime. To say it’s not easy is an understatement. I’ve been at it for decades with my own patterns, and some days there are huge breakthroughs to savor, and other days I feel discouragement when it seems I haven’t gotten very far at all. But, as Sheryl Crow once sang, “Every day is a winding road. I get a little closer now.” So no matter how many times my life seems like Groundhog Day over and over again, I just keep going, hoping that the journey won’t be as long as tortuous as weatherman Phil’s. But no matter, I just keep going.