Tomorrow is February 2nd: Groundhog Day. It is the day when we finally learn if we will have more winter weather or if spring is about to start. And that decision rests entirely on the shoulders of one groundhog somewhere up in Pennsylvania.
I can’t think of Groundhog Day without letting my mind wonder to the classic movie starring Bill Murray. In the movie, Murray plays a weatherman who wakes up at 6:00 AM each morning and is doomed to relive the same day over and over again until he gets it right. It is up there in my top 20 movies of all time I suppose.
Sometimes I think about this movie when I get up on days that are not February 2nd. The alarm goes off at the same time it did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. I lay in bed and wonder how the classes of the day will go. Will it be more of the same? Will I just live yesterday over again? Or will something extraordinary happen?
This is not a fair thing to do. After all, my students are all waking up to a new day as well. The circumstances of their lives will have an impact on whether they wake up happy or angry, peaceful or sad, hungry or full, fulfilled or longing. Currently, I have about 135 students during the day. That’s 135 different variables that come to bear on my day. I am not that good at math, but I would say that gives me somewhere in the billions of chances for a unique blend of personalities and events to make this day totally unlike any other.
So why do I wake up wondering if I’m in the Groundhog Day movie? That fault, my friends, lies totally with me. I am either open to a new set of circumstances, or I manipulate my own fate to make my day boring and repetitive.
I have the power to create the day I want to have. I can choose Yogi Berra’s “Deja Vu all over again,” or I can embrace “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
And so can you.
See you in the morning around the Groundhog Hole.
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