Keep on Keepin' on

Today is Groundhog Day. Whenever I think about Groundhog Day, a certain song starts running through my head: "I've Got You, Babe." 

I know – the sound track in my head is evidence that I have probably seen the movie, Groundhog Day one too many times. I'm sure you've seen it too--newscaster Phil Connors, played by comedian Bill Murray, goes to Punxatawney, PA, to cover the Official Groundhog story.

While there, he has what must be the world's record of consecutive bad days. Each night he goes to bed thinking how much he messed up that day, and figuring that tomorrow has to get better. The next morning he wakes up at the same time and hears the same song on the radio - "I've Got You, Babe," and the radio announcer starts in with the same announcements he's heard the day before. He walks out the door and runs into the same old high school acquaintance. And he has to keep covering the same story.

And every day, he makes the same stupid mistakes over … and over.

Finally, he realizes he is doomed to repeat Groundhog Day until he gets it right.

Now there's a fantasy for you. Wouldn't it be great if we could all repeat our bad days until we got them right? What a golden opportunity. How long might it take us all to get things right?  Would we ever get it right? 

Probably in a way we do end up re-playing those days, if only in our heads. We are always second-guessing ourselves and wondering if what we did was the right thing. It’s so easy to muse, “what if I'd done it differently?”

Starting over can be a frightening thought, though. I can think of plenty of bad days that I would not want to repeat. The days with embarrassing moments, heartbreaks and words I wish I hadn’t said. Yet, I can call them to mind all too vividly at a moment’s notice. I am reliving them, re-thinking them and repeating them – probably worse than if I woke up to “I’ve Got You, Babe” every morning on the radio.

It seems no matter how hard we try to do things differently a second (or third) time, they tend to turn out the same way  Patterns of behavior are ingrained sort of like the weather. We mere mortals tend to repeat our mistakes, and only by an extreme act of will can we divert our deeply entrenched habits and courses of action.

If I had the chance to repeat a given day of my life, would I end up doing any better? Would I be like the hapless Groundhog, awakened from a winter’s slumber and just groggily going through the motions? Or would I, like Phil Connors, simply move through the day on auto pilot and make the same mistakes I made originally?

As a mother I always hoped that somehow, after all the blunders I have committed in my life, I could help my kids avoid making the same mistakes that I had made. As parents I suppose we would all like to spare our children the second-guessing and regrets that comprise the Groundhog Day syndrome.

But our kids are only human, too. They will falter along the way, just like we did. You can’t tell them what to do. Well, you can – but they probably won’t listen.

We can hope, however, that just like us, they will find a way to redeem themselves and come out wiser for their experiences.

Maybe the beauty of this movie’s message to us is the idea that we can end up getting it right, after all, and move on from there. There is no more need to re-hash the past. Instead, we ought to look toward the future and all it has to offer.

Not a bad message at all.