Groundhog.

The movie was made in 1993—twenty six years ago! Bill Murray and Andie McDowell are ridiculously young. If you managed to miss it, you must watch the movie Groundhog Day. Besides being an enormously creative and genuinely funny romp, it is the quintessential story of transformation. Bill is an egocentric weatherman who manages to be callous and dismissive to everyone in his path…until he meets the new channel producer played by Andie McDowell.

At that point he makes the classic blunder: confusing love with possession. Reliving the same day, day after day, he moves through predictable stages of bewilderment and resentment, exploitation and manipulation, and finally desperation and despair. It is not until he reaches the end of himself and his control that he begins to uncover his rich humanity. It takes a while, but it emerges.

Over the endless repetition of February 2, Groundhog Day, he begins to wake up to the needs of people around him…and to realize he has the power to meet those needs. One crisis at a time, he moves beyond his innate selfishness to care for and serve those around him. And the love he tried so desperately to achieve by conquest he eventually wins by admiration, attentiveness, and kindness. Which breaks the cycle of meaningless repetition.

The metaphor hits close to home.  

It is enormously easy to fall into a rut where, even if the day is not a technical repeat of the day before, it feels like it for all practical purposes. The mundane striving, the endless grasping, the pervasive futility…it numbs the soul until you’re not certain a soul remains. 

But God always sends a wake-up call. Something that throws a monkey wrench into the machinery of meaninglessness and unconsciousness. Often the wake-up call is a crisis of some kind, some threat that thrusts a stick into the wheel of our bicycle and launches us over the handlebars. This terrifying experience is called grace. The gift reveals the brokenness of all our misshapen efforts. All the juggling balls and spinning plates come crashing down, and we think we’re done.

Until we realize life may have just begun.

In the place of all our self-referencing and ego, we begin to actually see the lives swirling around us…and to care. We wake up to ourselves, and our own appetites dim in the light of others’ great needs. We take one step to help, to serve, to sacrifice…and that leads to more such steps…until we have become something we were meant to be all along. A human being infused with divine love and creativity.

The movie is an enjoyable launching pad into the transformational journey toward the Second Half of Life.

ThriveTip

If it’s been a while, watch the movie again, preferably with someone you can dialog with about its message of transformation. Then discuss and/or journal about where you are still sleep-walking in your life. What would it take to wake up to your true self? What would aid in the shift from self-referencing to other-serving? Create one simple but measurable step…and take it within the next few days.

Takeaway

Choose mindfulness over mindlessness.