Groundhog Day and the 'By Accident' Effect
An excerpt from the next edition of Mathilde Magazine.
The following is an excerpt from an article I am writing for Mathilde Magazine - a beautiful, bi-annual magazine that facilitates free enquiry into the cultural zeitgeist. The editors of Mathilde are very dear to me - and I hope you will consider pre-ordering the next issue which will feature my complete article.
Days blur if we aren’t careful. Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, feels this acutely in the 1993 classic film Groundhog Day. His incessant focus on imagined future opportunities and successes traps him in a quagmire of repetitive and meaningless pessimism, narcissism, and consumerism. At the start of the story, Phil is a cynical, arrogant, self-absorbed weatherman who has resigned himself to a life of drudgery.
The cosmic, apparently Sisyphean trial he must suffer is being forced to literally live the same day on repeat until he learns his lesson. For a man focused on everything but the good he can do today, there could be no more perfect, divine punishment. Of course, Phil breaks the spell in the end and is freed from this hellscape—but this freedom is not guaranteed.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. — Matthew 6:34
Director Harold Ramis has told reporters that Phil was likely stuck in this cycle for thirty to forty years—a duration I am sure was no creative accident. The number forty is associated with testing, trial, and probation throughout the Bible. The Great Flood lasted forty days and forty nights, the Israelites spent forty years in the desert, Jesus’s temptation lasted forty days, and so on. These periods were characterised by cleansing and change—as too is Phil’s trial.
In our fallen state, the lesson we need to learn during these periods is rarely obvious to the learner.
Maybe if it were obvious, they might not take us so long, but we also know there are plenty of changes we should make that we continue to struggle with. Smokers know they should quit smoking, those quick to anger know they should practise more serenity. But it’s hard. Those sometimes misaligned behaviours do, in ways, serve us. That cigarette might calm your nerves, your anger has in the past terrified people into submission.
We aren’t purely logical beings—fortunately—so desired changes that we have intellectualised cause us pain as we attempt to embody them. It’s not that we don’t believe the change would be good, it’s that we have a spiritual and practical momentum that must be forced to change course sometimes. A number of studies show that it takes anywhere between 18 and 254 days to form a new habit - regardless of its importance and benefit to us.
Also, we rarely start changes from a complete intellectual understanding before moving to practical embodiment. If you rely on a complete intellectual understanding before you embody change, change may never come. In reality, the trials and changes we go through rarely appear reasonable—or even beneficial at all—until we have already overcome them and embodied the change. As some examples, by falling off our bike, or having our heart broken, or failing an exam, we learn important lessons about safety, true love, and work ethic that aren’t apparent until some time later. In the moment, it just hurts.
The Side Effect Effect
Often the benefits we obtain are not at all what we were aiming for when we start our trials. Sometimes what we receive instead is loftier and more noble growth…
Read the full version in the next issue of Mathilde Magazine.