I love Groundhog Day! It is one of my favorite minor holidays, right up there with St. Patrick’s Day, Pie Day (March 14) and Star Wars Day (May 4th). It is not a religious festival, and it is not well recognized by the society at large, and we do not get a day off, but it has special meaning to me nonetheless.
If truth be known, I paid scant attention to Groundhog Day while I was growing up along the West Coast (Washington, California, and Alaska). I think it is more of an East Coast and Midwest tradition, so I was in high school before I had ever heard about the importance of February 2nd. At the time, it did not make much sense to me. I did not understand how the groundhog seeing his shadow could relate to an early or a late spring. I think I was in college before someone finally explained that the Groundhog was afraid of his shadow… and if he saw it in February as he was waking up from his hibernation, then he would go back into his hole and hide for another six weeks. Yet, even with that explicit explanation, it still did not really make sense to me. What is the connection between a sunny day in February and longer winter in March?
Of course, now that I am older such contradictory wisdom makes perfect sense to me.
No… not really…
But it does not really have to make sense. When I saw the 1993 movie, “Groundhog Day” by Harold Ramis starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowell, I started really loving the holiday – sense or no. Thinking back on it, I am not sure what made me buy a ticket for a movie about a holiday that I never fully understood. I think it was because Bill Murray was in it and at the time I was willing to see anything that he starred in. There was no hype that drove me to the theatre. I entered the movie with no expectations. Of course… I left with an almost fanatic excitement about it – some might even say an obsession.
Why do I like this movie? I find myself having to explain this to people anytime the movie comes up – even to those who have seen it before. There are some who share my fanaticism, but there are others who smile and quietly shake their head. It is a strange story, but it has many funny lines and the characters are appealing. Of course, there are many films that fit that description. I think what I loved most about “Groundhog Day” was the unexpected depth of its storyline. The idea that a single recurring day might serve as an allegory for an entire lifespan touched a poetic nerve in me.
If you have not seen the movie, there is not much to spoil – the plot is very cyclical. Nevertheless, I will try to avoid the more explicit plot twists. In a nutshell, the movie is about a man who is forced to live the same day over and over and over again until he gets it right. At one point near the end of the beginning, the main character (Phil… “like the Groundhog Phil”) was sitting at a bar with two of the locals. They were not his friends, they just happened to be sharing the same bar at the same time. The scene occurs two or three days after he realized that he was trapped in a continual time loop – every day at 6am he would wake up and start again as if the previous day had never occurred. No one else in his life (or in the movie) experienced anything different. No one else knew, or could know what he was experiencing. Only Phil was aware that he was living the same day again and again.
In this scene, he is sitting at the bar, lamenting his fate with his two companions who obviously do not understand what he is saying. He is sober, but his two companions are very drunk.
Suddenly, Phil asks one of them, “What would you do, if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” A moment passes, and his drunk friend answers, “Well… that about sums it up for me!”
It is a beautiful line. It expresses the thesis of the entire movie.
You do not have to be caught up in a magical time loop to find yourself trapped in an unending sequence of events. It is just as easy to fall into a daily routine in any town, even if you are following a normal timeline. Eat, sleep, and waste time on the same temporary pursuits (drinking, plays games, trolling Facebook). It is not difficult to feel like every new day is exactly the same as the day before – and that nothing that you do matters.
Therein lies the beauty of the drunk’s line. “… that about sums it up for me!” Unlike Phil, he chose to live in his continuous time loop. In truth, we are never really trapped into any routines. We choose to accept them. We become mentally or physically lazy. We might hide. We can choose to avoid any exertion of energy outside the bare minimum, and beyond that necessary to break free and follow a new path that leads to new challenges, and new growth.
What would you do … or what do you do… when you live the same day over and over again? It is a wonderful question. And it is one that convicts. We always have free will, and we are never really trapped unless we allow ourselves to be so doomed.
My observations on this aspect of “Groundhog Day” came late to me, I think. When I first saw the movie, I was just beginning my graduate school. There was no such thing as living the same day over and over again in my life – I was living the life of a student, semester by semester, with long breaks for summers and Christmas and a constant series of seasonal jobs. I may have had routines during the semester, but there was always an end to the semester, and always an expectation of more or less constant change. Rather than feeling the frustration of being stuck in a rut, I had the opposite feeling of anxious expectation that I was waiting for my life to really start. In the meantime, I was in constant preparation mode.
Only as an adult do I more fully appreciate the position of the drunk at the bar who experienced no change and saw no future. After living more than a dozen years in the same house, at the same job, in the same town, I think I can begin to appreciate the sense of futility of living a day to day existence – and yet – even now it is still pretty foreign to me. I only appreciate it an intellectual way.
I love the depth of that part of the movie, but I cannot really relate to it. I have never actually lived it. My life is constantly changing. Today, I see that theme as a warning not to be lazy – it is not as a prediction nor is it a commentary on small town living. It just requires that we take an active part in our own life to avoid such a fate.
When I first saw the film as a graduate student, the theme that moved me most had less to do with the larger allegory of day to day routine, and more to do with other theme of divine presence in our lives. The movie is not explicitly religious in any way, but there is a slow and steady undercurrent of providential design that runs throughout. Why is Phil stuck in the same day again and again? There is a sense that Phil needs to learn something, but who is responsible for constructing this particular method of instruction? Who is it that changes Phil’s life, first by trapping him in the loop, and then by releasing him? The movie is not religious, but it is very philosophical – and in my mind, I cannot see a philosophy of causation without seeing the unseen hand of God in it. As a young man in my early 20s, I loved seeing the unseen and this film was refreshing in its depth.
There is one moment during the film that more or less reveals divine intervention — though, it is rather subtle. It is the scene toward the end of the middle part, when Phil is trying to save an old man from dying. In the story, after his lament in the bar Phil realizes that living a day to day existence might have its advantages – it means that he can live without suffering the consequences for his actions. At first, this discovery seems liberating and he immediately starts on a life of hedonism. Using his foreknowledge of the day’s events, he tries to satisfy his personal pleasures – with women, money, things, and other sensations. Of course, the effort is meaningless. As with all such pursuits, Phil finds that the abundance of senseless pleasures quickly leads to a desensitized life, which in turn leads to an inability to be satisfied with anything. He falls into despair, which results in a new routine of (literally) self-destructive behaviors that are equally ineffective at satisfying his needs. In the end, after what must have been hundreds of cyclical days later, Phil concludes that since he cannot find any new stimulation, and since he cannot destroy what he knows, and since he knows so much, then he must be a god.
This conclusion, that he is a god, leads Phil to change his approach, but he still lacks a general direction. There is a pause in the momentum of the film as Phil begins to develop his own, as of yet unrecognized, gifts. He is not striving for anything in particular, he just wanted to develop what he has.
That is the context for the scene with the dying old man. One day, as he was turning a corner, Phil sees an old man – one that he passed by every day – dying in the alleyway. Phil takes him to the hospital and a moment later we find out that the old man is dead. He (and the audience) suddenly realize that this old man must have been dying every single day. While Phil was satisfying his pleasures, or catering to his despair, this man was living and dying alone and ignored by the world around him. Phil, with his newfound sense of divine confidence decides that he is going to change this situation. At one point in the hospital after the old man is dead, the nurse says to him, “Sometimes people just die.” Phil turns to her resolutely and answers, “Not today.”
That day was his day. He knew everything about that day. He would not let that man die on his day.
For the next series of scenes, we see Phil trying every possible solution to help the old man. He gives him food, he gives him comforts, and he stays with the old man continually. And yet every night, no matter what he did during the day, the old man still dies.
After what seems like every possible option had been tried, we see Phil back in the same alley with the old man, who is lying on his back. Phil is struggling to save the man, performing CPR and pleading with him to breathe. But the man still dies. Phil finally gives up, and sits back exhausted. It was not for lack of effort on his part that the man dies. It was just his time, and Phil realizes that he cannot change this event.
No words are spoken… he just looks up toward heaven. The audience knows that this is not in his control. In that moment, I see a recognition of his own futility… or perhaps, of declaration of his ultimate humility.
Phil understood then that he was not God.
That scene resonated strongly with me as a grad student. In the halls of academia, it is easy to lose sight of our own futility and essential humility. We learn so much and we aspire to such originality, and our minds are constantly trying to solve all the problems that have previously been unsolved. We set ourselves up.
If we succeed in our studies, and if we can manage to avoid the dangers of laziness, or hedonism, or despair, then we inevitably face other dangers. The most enduring temptation is that of hubris and own intellectual pride. We can feel like we know more than our neighbors. We can come to believe that we are smarter than the crowd. Perhaps worse, we can convince ourselves that we are less accountable for ordinary obligations and expectations than those around us.
This sense of hubris begins in graduate school but it is only compounded once you get in front of the classroom. We have 25 faces all looking up and listening to your every word, and sincerely trying to understand what you say. It is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the knowledge you hold in your particular field transfers over to all other fields. If you are not deliberately careful, it is easy to believe you are an expert in politics, social relations, and even life itself. Not only hubris, but vanity and arrogance and pretentious affectation often follow these lies.
We may not believe we are gods… but if you listen to the academic community long enough, it is easy to believe that there are some among us who believe we are greater than the gods – or that we do not need them at all (which is much the same thing).
Of course… that is a mortal mistake.
We are not God. No one is God, or a god, or personally endowed with such gifts as to distinguish them from all other mortals. We are, all of us, creatures and creations. No matter how much we may learn about a particular day, we cannot control it. We did not make it, and we have no control over most of what happens it. In the movie, Phil was desperately trying to force a women to love him – and no matter how much he strived to control all the elements of the day, he could not command her heart. So too in our own lives, our knowledge has little authority on those who do not want to submit to it. We cannot control even our own days. All we can do is live our given day with the best that we have to offer.
I love Groundhog Day because I love the movie. I love the movie because I love its constant reminder that our lives really only represent one day in the grand story of mankind.
Do not misunderstand — the expertise and talents that we develop during our lives really do matter. They really are important. It is good to go to school. It is good to develop all the gifts that God gave us. Our individual gifts are truly meaningful because they play a part in the larger story that God has already orchestrated for us, and if we leave our gifts untouched or unrecognized, then we may miss out on the beauty that lay ahead (that is the punishment of our laziness, which marks a day to day existence).
Yet, our gifts (developed or not) do not make us unique. Oddly enough, they are not really even meant for us. God gave create us to be stewards of the gifts he bestowed, and we developed them in order better serve His plans, not ours. They do not give us extra powers, they do not make us better, and they are not controlling. In the grand scheme of life, when we stand before God, our gifts will not distinguish us from our neighbors. Instead, we will be judged by what we have done with those gifts.
No matter how accomplished we become, we are only a part of a larger tapestry that was created and designed by someone else for larger purposes. In the movie, after Phil realized that he was not a god, he then spent the rest of his cyclical days trying to develop his gifts and to use them to improve the lives of those around him. He was an expert on that one day, and he knew more than those around him about what the day held, but he was as much a participant in that day as they were. This acknowledgement is both humbling and liberating. All Phil could do was to do his best, and the day would take its own course.
Academia is particular prone to hubris and pride, but I am sure that other professions have very similar temptations. Business and politics and theater come to mind. This is not a political blog and I do not really want to enter into that arena, but I might suggest that much of our cultural confusion stems from self-proclaimed experts (in academia, in government, or elsewhere) who believe that they can control, and fix, and permanently solve the world’s problems. There is a great deal of hubris and pride behind the grand plans of social engineering and bureaucratic regulation. So many academic theories and social policies presume that most of the people are “doing it wrong” and that they need to be encouraged or compelled to “do it the right way.” Certainly, no one claims to be a god in the modern era, but it is quite common to believe that we can conceive of the ultimate designs and that do not need any god above us – which is, again, essentially the same belief.
There are two differing approaches to how we might develop our gifts and control our lives. On the one hand, we might focus on developing our own personal gifts for the betterment of those around us, with an innate recognition that the grand plan is outside of our control. On the other hand, we might focus on our own gifts so much that we insist that those around us defer to our own expertise, and embrace our own grand plans despite their own personal gifts.
One of these approaches involves humility, and the other does not.
Groundhog Day is an annual tradition in our household. A few years ago, when my family drove out to the East Coast through Pennsylvania, we went well out of our way to make the pilgrimage to Punxsatawney. It is a very cute little community, and though the film captured key spots and recreated the atmosphere, it is not quite the same. We toured the sights and stopped by a few stores and we got to see the four or five “Phils” who live in a posh compound off the town center. They live behind glass and are extremely cute (though they seemed to be spend most of their time sleeping.)
In a tradition similar to “It’s a Wonderful Life” and New Year’s Eve, our family watches “Groundhog Day” every February 2nd – and we do our best not to recite every line before it is spoken by the actors. It is difficult, but we try not to spoil the sense of the movie as it was made by blurting out all the fun lines… we try… but… we know the story so well…
