Groundhog Day

No, not the calendar date, but the movie in which Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a shallow, obnoxious TV weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, PA to cover the day’s festivities and finds himself trapped in an infinite loop of identical Groundhog Days. This being Hollywood, of course the movie revolves around a beautiful woman, the sort who would never fall for Connors unless he can learn a few important lessons about life and love from the endless identical clean slates set before him.

During one desperate phase of his ordeal, a crazed Connors kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil and plunges his car over a cliff, killing himself and the groundhog in a spectacular, fiery wreck… only to wake up on the same snowy Groundhog Day morning in the same motel room with the same Sonny and Cher song playing on the clock radio. The poor guy can’t even kill himself! So he gets up out of bed and does it all over again, and again, and again…

Underneath this Tinsel Town fiction beats a resonant but unglamorous truth: humans change their lives usually only when they absolutely have to, and even when change is inescapable, most occurs slowly, without fanfare, and by infinitesimal degrees. No wonder religious and Hollywood miracles hold such allure, to the extent many people end up waiting out their lives for a sudden something to happen that probably never will, rather than getting off the pot and actually doing something that will (eventually) bring actual results.

In the sense of real-life change occurring at a glacial pace, every day on Penikese is Groundhog Day. Our boys have developed their problematic behaviors over years only to have circumstances force them to choose between Penikese and some other rotten consequence like jail. They want to do neither in the worst way but, with exhortation and a Machiavellian arm twist or two, some choose Penikese, a difficult and important first step that is far from the hardest of those to come.

Many arrive on the island ready to buckle down, floating on a pink cloud of unrealistic expectation about how long and how much work true change will entail, an expectation not dissimilar to early recovery from addictions. Hey, this isn’t so bad! Just hit a few meetings, bang through the 12 steps (shouldn’t take too long) and boom, I’m recovered! Ah, but if change were that easy, wouldn’t everyone do it, and everyone succeed?

Inevitably pink clouds dissipate and the real work begins battling volatile, unsafe and uncontrollable feelings, irresistible urges and temptations, old ghosts, haunting fears, cognitive trap doors, and bouts of stinkin’ thinkin’. Success, improvement and mastery come in near equal measure to setbacks and regression so that, lost deep among the trees of recovery, the forest of net progress is nearly impossible to recognize. For most people, it doesn’t take long for disillusionment to set in, and once that worm gets in the brain it eats resolve away until giving up looks like the only sensible choice.

For those of us in the trenches shoveling along with our students against the tide of human failing, we get balled up and mired in the march of days seemingly going nowhere, too. We doubt our effectiveness, wonder if we are making a difference, whether it’s realistic to expect undoing 16 years of learning and ingrained behavior in only 9 months, how a particular boy is making progress, or whether these boys can even change at all.

Being trapped in Groundhog Day was a torture for Phil Connors, but that very same torture was also his only way out. Penikese is little different, at times a bit of Hell, but over time an island of forgiveness and salvation. Each day is a fresh opportunity to try again, make the same dumb mistakes, fall in the same holes, spin your wheels, drive everyone nuts and exhaust their patience. Yet, although desperate to throw in the towel and say screw this!, we somehow never completely give up on ourselves nor, as much as they might want to, do others completely give up on us.

Yes, the true story of internalized change and recovery is one of time, lots of time, a winding and uncertain path, raw perseverance and endurance, and a conscious decision made each new day (and sometimes several times during the same day) to give this never ending slog one more try. The only difference is hanging in there until something does happen without ever knowing exactly when that will be.

Then one day almost past the point of thinking or caring about it anymore, we wake up knowing a tiny something somewhere is different. It can be subtle and small and difficult to put a finger on at first, but this, the first glimmers of actual (not imagined) change taking place, is unmistakably real and genuinely miraculous in a way no magic wand or Hollywood fantasy could ever make possible.