Reincarnated on Groundhog Day

One of my favorite movies is “Groundhog Day” (dir. Harold Ramos). It stars Bill Murray as the weatherman who keeps waking up to the same Groundhog Day over, and over, and over again. The movie has special meaning to me because, to me, the movie is about what I refer to as “everyday reincarnation.” Don’t worry, I won’t go too Buddhist on you. And, by the way… SPOILER ALERT!

Bill Murray’s character, Phil, keeps waking up to the same day because he is essentially the same guy everyday: cynical, misanthropic, and egotistical. If he dies, he just wakes up to the same Groundhog Day as if nothing happened. At first, he tries to use this curse to his advantage to sleep with women, and to steal money, but quickly grows bored. He even tries to get a woman to fall in love with him – over and over again – but it doesn’t work. Rather than making the most of it, he tries everything he can to break the curse. Nothing works. He even turns altruistic at one point – sort of – and tries to save the lives of every person that would have died on Groundhogs Day in the town of Punxsutawney. Still doesn’t work. I say “sort of” because if he’s saving people’s lives for personal gain, it’s not exactly all that altruistic.

Then, one day, he decides to focus on the present moment rather than focusing on getting out. He accepts his situation, and is content with it. He figures he’s got all this time, so he might as well read a few books. Get to know the people in town. He even learns to play the piano. He becomes a new man. And without even trying, the woman he pursued at the beginning of the movie all of a sudden falls in love with him. And viola, he awakens the next day to a brand new day as a new man. It is only when Phil accepts the present moment, and breaks himself of his cynicism, egotism, and misanthropic ways that he is able to break the curse of reincarnating into the same person over and over again.

Many of us go through life not living in the moment, and end up reliving the same miseries over and over again. We feel stuck in our lives, just as Phil felt stuck in that town. Rather than seizing the day, we tend to fall back to our bad habits, and our negative scripts.

According to quantum physics, we literally pop in and out of existence every moment of our existence. We are literally reincarnated everyday. We awaken everyday to new opportunities. We are simply choosing to pop back into the lives we have. We can literally choose to pop back into a different reality. We are in control of where we are emotionally with the world around us. We can choose how we react to any given moment. It is only when we choose to break ourselves of our bad habits, and negatives scripts that we can awaken into the new person we were meant to be. What day we awaken into, and the person we wake up to is not a matter of will, planning, or force. It is a matter of choice.