Groundhog Day

I love the movie “Groundhog Day.” It seems like a cute little movie, but it has a deeper meaning. I’ve always been the kind of person who is drawn to stories about time travel. Sure, I know that we really can’t do it and that it would be disastrous if we could. We as a species do enough to mess up life as it is. Can you imagine what we’d do if we could meddle with the past and/or the future? Yikes!

My all-time favorite TV show was “Quantum Leap,” specifically because it was about a man who was able to “leap” into other people’s lives in their past and fix something that changed the course of their lives for the future. Because I made some fundamentally bad choices in my late teen years, I have spent far too much time and energy in wishing I could have someone come “fix” it for me so I could have the life I was supposed to have. Alas, that only happens in Hollywood or in novels.

Back to “Groundhog Day.” I love that movie because it has a great story, one that I think we should all learn. There’s the character that Bill Murray plays, an arrogant weather forecaster who is forced to go cover Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. He thinks it’s stupid, beneath him, pointless, whatever. He’s simply NOT a joy to be around. Then, to make his life even worse, he learns that there is a huge storm coming in, and he’ll be stuck in Punxsutawney another night.

This is where the fun part comes in. He wakes up the “next” morning and quickly realizes it’s the same exact day. On the rare occasion I hear “I Got You, Babe,” I have to smile. So the poor guy watches all the exact same situations come up. At the end of the day, again, he learns there is a big storm coming, and he has to stay over again. Of course, the next day, Sonny and Cher are happily crooning on the radio, and he realizes it’s Groundhog Day….again. As he does the same things he did the first or second time, he gets the same result. So then he tries to change a thing here or a thing there. Of course, he’s the only one who knows this is happening.

So the character is, at first, bewildered. Soon his bewilderment turns to despair. Kind of a “why bother?” or “what’s the point” attitude. Then he starts to play around and act as though life is just a big joke. He risks his life, pigs out, etc., but he never loses his sense of hopelessness. I mean, tomorrow won’t be another day, will it? It’ll be the same day. He feels stuck in that short moment in time.

The ultimate lesson in the movie is that as the character learns to truly live his life and appreciate it for what it is, he really DOES live his life. He starts to do things for other people. He tries to save the life of a vagrant who will ultimately die, to no avail. So then he takes him out for a meal, showing an unexpected dose of compassion. He then shows compassion for the child who falls from the tree and the man who chokes on his meal.

So this poor guy has been suffering through this day, feeling trapped and unable to get “un” trapped. He then recognizes the suffering of others. He looks at his life from an entirely different perspective, being much more positive than he ever had in his life. You need to see the movie to find out the whole story.

How often do we get “stuck” in a situation or a frame of mind or an experience and find ourselves either unwilling or unable to rescue ourselves? You know what I’ve learned? I have found that when I step back a little bit and take in more of the entire picture, there is a lot more to learn than what I initially see. When we are babies, we can only react to external stimuli as well as to our own hunger or pain. If we are fortunate, we have someone who is loving and who unconditionally answers our needs, forgiving us and loving us despite our worst temper tantrums, but gently teaching us to be better. But as adults, we have the opportunity to handle our needs and our concerns in an entirely different way.

I have watched a few of my children stray, and it has been really hard for me. I know that they have been taught correct principles, and it’s easy to blame myself. I haven’t been one of those parents who continues to “parent” my adult children. They have the right to make their own choices, and it is interesting to see what they do and how they succeed (or not). On the other hand, when I was much younger, I blamed my parents for not doing this or not doing that or, conversely, for DOING this or DOING that. I thought, “If only they had (or had not) done this thing or that thing, my life would have been SO much better.” Well, duh, who has parents who can read the future and can make every decision so that it leads the children where they should be? None of us.

My father and I struggled through my teen years. I was a good kid. I NEVER experimented with drugs or drinking or any kind of immoral behavior. I thought of myself as the best daughter my parents could have. The reality was that I was rebellious and angry much of the time from about age 15 to age 19. I have the benefit of journals from that time to see how out of touch my “reality” was with the real reality. Thankfully, while I could barely stand my own father at times, as I grew up and began to experience my own adult tragedies and triumphs, I also matured and learned to love my dad again, as well as my siblings, who were the bane of my existence when they were so young. I also gained a greater appreciation for my mom. My parents didn’t change; I did. Now that my dad has been gone for 10 years, my grieving isn’t as sharp, but my gratitude has grown tremendously. I am so glad that my dad was able to know and love six of my seven children. I am so glad that I had at least that one person in my world who still liked talking to me and sharing a corny joke when he had one. I miss him.

I still have some struggling children. My heart rejoices when someone sees past their imperfections and loves the soul within and nurtures them. I hope that I do the same for other people’s children. I love my kids, struggling or not. At least five of them have issues with ADHD and/or other conditions that make their battles seem more uphill than others. And yet they are each very unique and necessary to my life for very different reasons. And then there are still days where I just want to ask Heavenly Father, “Okay, would you, please, tell me what lesson you want me to learn from this so I can learn it and move on?” I swear, He has a sense of humor…..