I want to write about Groundhog's Day . . . the movie, not the strange holiday. This morning, the alarm pulled me out of a deep sleep. I had been dreaming, but no one in my dream world was wearing a mask. No one was social distancing. I was dreaming of a world pre-Covid. I awoke to a different reality, disappointed.
This brought back memories of Bill Murray in the film Groundhog's Day. Each morning, the alarm rings, and he is destined to relive this single day, again and again. I have been feeling like I have fallen into a pattern, a post-Covid pattern, a pattern I would like to interrupt. It is not so much my early-morning activities, which are primarily restorative and contemplative, but the work patterns. Zoom meeting. Zoom class. Zoom facilitation. I feel chained to a screen. This does not happen in my dreams. I blissfully move through crowds of people, talking, hugging, teaching, laughing and crying. The pattern I wake up to each morning feels isolated and cold compared to my dreams. This is the pattern I would break.
How did Bill Murray's character break free of the repetition of Groundhog's day? I think what he managed to do was turn his personal hell into a heaven. It seems like he learned to take everyone of those irritating people and moments in his life and turn them into love. He literally loved himself back to life. There is some deep wisdom here.
I have a new opportunity each time the alarm rings. I can break the pattern. I am appalled at how quickly I fell into a routine, almost without thinking: "This is the new way I work. This is how I live while sheltering-in-place." Our brain loves routine, so it didn't take much effort. Repeat a new pattern, even a few times, and the brain goes to work on our behalf turning a high energy (glucose-burning) activity into a lower energy package, by helping us form habits. Am I stuck here? No!
I do not know how much longer I will be working from home, but I do know that I can change my trajectory, even as Bill Murray's character did. Routine can become a rut or routine can be taken to the level of ritual. I prefer the latter. Why not use these interesting times to pay deep attention, moment by moment, and reinvent our experience with ourselves, each other and the world? We are at a highly potentiated time in human history. It is as if we've hit a giant, pause button, and we are poised on the brink of becoming something altogether new and extraordinary, if we have courage and stamina.
It is a grow or die time. When that alarm rings tomorrow, I want to shake myself into wakefulness in a new way. It's up to us to re-enchant the world! For me, that begins with the very ordinary practices that bracket my work day. Rut or ritual? I choose ritual. I choose love. I choose attending at a new level. We may be here for a while, so why not plant a garden, within and without?
I have always felt that complaining is getting away with not having to grow into something, maybe even that it's being a little lazy. (This is not a comment on your post. Your post made me think about this.) But I think it's because as a child growing up I saw Christ as someone who suffered tremendously, and I was still alive so I must have it better. So I programmed myself for hard things... well seemingly hard things. I remember finding joy in doing dishes at thanksgiving because it had to be done, so I wanted to be part of it, give into it... give in to it. Sometimes it's tough to get past the initial feeling and change…
Love your thoughts here. Yes, it is so easy to fall into routine and bemoan our fate instead of taking the time and energy to explore this opportunity to spend quality time with ourselves. Just stopping for a few minutes to stand in a rainshower during my walk to the mailbox the other week was a treat. Such a simple but delicious reward...listening to the drops fall from the leaves of the trees, breathing in the color and aroma of the damp earth, and feeling the gentle, cool splash on my face was a boon to my senses and soul. Thanks for sharing this reminder to choose love and ritual over rut.