TODAY IS TOMORROW
And It’s not you … it’s me. That’s the call to action, not a lame breakup excuse.
Dry January has a different meaning for me.
After spending December binge watching Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel, I take a break from TV in January. But on February 2, I’m ready to camp out for a day on the sofa and watch Bill Murray slog through the snow in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I’ve probably seen Groundhog Day twenty times, and yet I’m still drawn in by Murray’s character, Phil Connors, as he repeats the same day over and over again.
It’s easy to relate to a day that’s stuck on repeat … get up, go to work, come home, cook dinner, go to bed … repeat. It’s also easy to focus on only negative things. Running out of coffee and having to drink instant. The red traffic light that takes four minutes to change (that is an accurate number—I timed it). The homeless guy with the cardboard sign standing in the median that almost makes you miss the green light, and the group text that no matter how many ways you try to silence it, pings repeatedly during your Zoom call. And that’s just the beginning.
On your way home, the guy is still standing in the median. Or is it a different guy? You’re tired and have sore eyes from staring at a computer screen all day, and when you look in the fridge to select something for dinner, you remember the reason you had to drink instant coffee. You haven’t been to the grocery store!
At the start of the movie, Murray is arrogant, entitled, lacks empathy, and is a true narcissist. He talks down to the cameraman, insults his new producer, and makes sure everyone knows he thinks he is above them and his story assignment. With that attitude, it’s easy to think that he deserves everything that happens to him. And you can’t help but cheer when he repeatedly steps into a huge icy pothole.
But then something happens. After days of waking up to Sonny and Cher playing on the clock radio, being accosted by a long-lost, insurance-selling high school friend—not to mention sloshing around in wet socks—he realizes he is the one that must change.
It’s not you … it’s me. That’s the call to action, not a lame breakup excuse.
It’s like the parable of goodwill, which isn’t an actual named parable in the Bible. However, it’s the idea of goodwill toward man and actively showing kindness and compassion toward others regardless of their circumstances. This becomes the theme of the second half of the movie.
The first ten, maybe even fifteen times, that I watched the movie, it didn’t occur to me that on the actual Groundhog Day, the day Punxsutawney Phil whispers the weather report to a man in a top hat, doesn’t have anything to do with a day repeating itself. That reference came after the success of the movie!
On the surface, Groundhog Day is an amusing comedy with clever dialog and pratfalls. But upon closer examination, or should I say realization, it’s a movie about change, love, and being a better person, which coincidentally are all ideas I’ve been thinking about lately.
And it’s why one of the last lines in the movie rings so true … Today is Tomorrow.
