Déjà vu All Over Again
Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12
Qarol Price and
Robert M. Price have been a team since 1981. During Bob’s pastorate at First Baptist Church of Montclair New Jersey, the couple hosted Heretics Anonymous, a salon that lasted over 30 years. After his departure from First Baptist, they hosted a livingroom congregation called “The Grail”. In 1999 they published Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of RUSH. They now lead discussions about the depiction of moral character in films in Selma, NC and are publishers of Mindvendor Books and its imprint Exham Priory. Qarol is webmaster for Neuse River Writers.
photo: Qarol and Bob New Year’s Eve, 1981
“Well, it’s Groundhog Day… again!” That’s what TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) says the first time the day repeats itself on an endless loop in the hilarious and profound 1993 movie titled, of course, Groundhog Day. We just discussed the film the other day in our Film Discussion Club. And it happens to be Groundhog Day (literally) as we write!
The movie might be compared to an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. The series frequently depicted the bafflement of a character who wakes up one day to find himself in a seemingly impossible situation. No one knows him anymore. Or everyone but he now speaks a different language. Or there is no one else around. He must figure out why, and he usually doesn’t. Such episodes prompt the viewer to ask, “Is this some kind of parable about the way life is? This is most certainly the case with Groundhog Day. Phil never finds out how the daily rewind is happening - or why. But he does learn a lot from the experience.
We get our first big clue when Phil is sitting at a bowling alley bar with a couple of half-drunk local townies in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where he seems doomed to repeat every darn day of his “reporting” on whether the town’s famous groundhog emerges to see his shadow, signifying how long winter is going to last. Phil asks, rhetorically, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was the same and nothing you did mattered?” One of the boozy guys replies, “That about sums it up for me….” Bingo! That is what our lives are like—if we let them!
Phil first takes advantage of the fact that he knows precisely what’s going to happen each day in every inch of the town. He knows when a Brinks truck is going to be unattended, and he simply strolls over and swipes a fat money bag. But of course, the next day, which is always the same day, the money is gone and so is whatever extravagance he had bought with it! All is fleeting! Nothing he did yesterday “sticks.” Back to square one. At length he despairs and kills himself.
But, wouldn’t you know it, the next morning he wakes up alive (and bored and depressed) again. Phil has always been a totally self-centered jerk, but now he has begun to realize that it is a dead end and is getting him precisely nowhere. He broadens his perspective. He shifts his concern to the needs of others who previously had been merely opportunities or obstacles in his selfish schemes. But now that he sees how futile his schemes have been, he starts seeing other people not as mere means to an end but rather as ends in themselves. So he starts treating them with respect and compassion and begins doing a host of good deeds - the same ones over and over!
Early on he fantasizes about beautiful Rita, his TV producer, and carefully plans to win her over so he can, you know - “score.” It is all manipulation, and when she comes to realize it, she dismisses him with a daily series of slaps in the face. But as he matures, Phil stops his scheming and takes a sincere interest in and admiration for her. And thus, no longer trying to win her, he wins her. Yogis call this “acting apart from the fruits of action.”
And, just as important, he decides to develop his own potential and talents. He learns the art of ice-sculpting. (There’s that Buddhist reverence for delighting in the precious, fleeting beauty in the impermanent moment, in the Now). He learns to play piano beautifully. He learns French in order to study French poetry . He studies medicine. One viewer put the clues together and figured out that Phil must have been trapped in the Punxsutawney Zone for at least seventeen years! Might as well put the time to good use, right? And once he has become a whole new Phil, the normal passing of the days resumes.
Some take Groundhog Day as a parable about Reincarnation: you will start life over and over again until you get it right! That’s a fair reading, but I think the doctrine of Reincarnation is a parable for Groundhog Day and the lesson it teaches. Your life does begin anew each and every morning. You can waste it or you can make the most of it, the best of it. And in the end the only thing you really accomplish is not what you do or what you accumulate, but rather what you are.
For Phil Connors—and for us – life is what Joseph Campbell calls the Hero’s Journey that life challenges us all to embark upon. Psychologist Carl Jung explained it this way: each of us, starting as children, is necessarily self-centered and self-seeking. We must establish an individual Ego. But we mustn’t stop there. We should use that Ego as a launching pad for becoming a Self. That means, not that we sacrifice our own interests on behalf of others, but instead that our sympathies widen so that the interests of others become our own interests, and we strive to act for everyone’s good, no longer just for our own. Because their interests have become ours as well. This is exactly what Groundhog Day shows happening to Phil Connors. Within the repeating days, we witness Phil’s Ego beginning to represent the moral stages of personal growth. From jerk to Jesus.
Stories like this inspire us and clarify matters for a good reason: our own lives are stories. They are narrative in nature. The “meaning” of your life is the plot of the story you are living. It may be a story you consciously choose after reading a book or watching a film. It may be a story your parents programmed into you. But only you can discern (or create) the meaning of your life by finding that this or that narrative rings true to you.
As you can see, a film discussion group can be an opportunity for edifying community discussions. My husband Bob and I used to host a salon called “Heretics Anonymous” in which the various attenders held a wide variety of opinions. (“Heretics” because we dared to question the old taboo that says, “Never discuss religion, sex, politics.”) Rather than creating friction between us, these different views provided a golden opportunity to understand one another. And you begin to see yourself and your beliefs through the eyes of others.
Our discussions usually focused on questions of philosophy, religion and ethics. It could be quite enlightening. (You can read more about Heretics Anonymous in Bob’s popular book The Reason-Driven Life, a rejoinder to Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life.) Now, through our community organization called Virtue Works, we have started leading the film discussion group at The Harrison Center for Active Aging in Selma discussing movies relevant to each month’s official character trait celebrated by Johnston County Public Schools. The intention is to create ever more occasions and venues for these moral themes to be grappled with by the community. You can read Qarol’s character consciousness column each month at JNOW Magazine, spotlighting JCPS character trait of the month. This month is Fairness. The more focus and attention we devote to these philosophical ideals, the better we understand and imbue our community with ever higher standards and their fruits. After all, it’s only fair.
