Yesterday was Groundhog Day, February 2, the day when Punxsutawney Phil comes out of his burrow to look around. According to legend, if he sees his shadow he goes back inside and that means we have six more weeks of winter. If he does not see his shadow then he stays outside to indicate that spring will be earlier than usual. February 2 is the date for this observance because it is exactly midway between the end of autumn and the beginning of spring. Six weeks into winter, the little mammal comes out to help us know how to think about the season so we can have hope that winter will soon end or we can resign ourselves to enduring the winter with its cold and snow.
In 1993, a film with the same name as this observance was released starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. It was about a weatherman from the city who was sent to the small town in Pennsylvania to cover the story of the groundhog and his forecast. The man was a cynic and considered the assignment to be beneath him. He was grump and miserable and wanted to be sure that everyone he met knew he was miserable. There was a female newscaster along for the same assignment and he soon took a liking to her and wanted to impress her in many ways. He did not achieve his goal, however, because his bad attitude turned her off and made him dislike him instead.
Each morning when he woke up, his radio alarm clock was playing the old song by Sonny and Cher, “I’ve Got You, Babe”. He was puzzled why the woman he liked did not like him so he decided to change his ways, after waking up every day and reliving the same day again and again. At first, he thought he could get away with doing things that were antisocial, such as robbing a bank or causing people harm, but he just woke up the next day stuck in Groundhog Day over and over again. He finally figured it out. The only way to get out of the cycle he was in was to become a better person. He began to change for the better. He took music and art lessons. He learned to cook. He became a kinder, gentler man. And then, one day he woke up and the music on the radio was not the same. He had done it. He had outlived Groundhog Day and the woman he cared about suddenly cared about him also.
Groundhog Day, the movie, is a metaphor for being stuck in ways of life that are detrimental to our emotional or physical health. We sometimes do not even recognize those habits or ways that make us less than we could be. We just go along on “autopilot” so often that we do not even recognize that we are doing things that we need to stop.
When I was out for my afternoon walk two days ago in my neighborhood, I suddenly found myself witnessing a woman coming out of her house to a car driven by a younger woman. I know that the older woman is the mother of the younger woman. The older woman must have been angry with her daughter because as she came out of the house and walked toward the car, she began to project in a loud enough voice that all could hear her a string of profanities that would make a sailor blush. She obviously must speak that way most of the time because she made no effort to be quiet about the way she talked or to change the language she used. That language must be natural for her and it is not very helpful language. She no doubt does not recognize that she is speaking in this way and exhibiting behavior that is not helpful to her or others.
So many people are so casual about their speech pattern and what they say and they assume that everyone else must speak in the same way. I do not speak in such a way and find such speech offensive. I could not, of course, reprimand this woman for what she said because she was in her yard and addressing her daughter and I just happened to be walking by as she did. I tried to just look forward and pretend that I never heard it. It was very sad for me to see someone so out of control, though.
As we seek ways to be different people, we will find them. We have to want to change if we want to see changes in our lives for the better. Some people have serious problems that would benefit from receiving personal counseling. They often do not receive the counseling because they refuse to go to a counselor. They fear that such intervention may reveal things they would rather keep to themselves. They would prefer to hide their actions and fears and feelings that are not beneficial to them and hope that they will go away. Those things never do, though. They are a part of us and will not get better until we decide to take a course of action to make them better.
I am an advocate of personal counseling, having been a recipient of it over the years. It is a very helpful process if one finds a counselor with whom one can be totally comfortable and one can reveal all one’s inner thoughts and feelings that cause them distress. Having a counselor to talk to is like having a friend whom one can be sure will never reveal what one has told them because they promise to be that confidante and have that trust between two people that is dependable. I found such a person twice in my life and at both times they were helpful in making my life much better.
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