All This Has Happened Before

As we choose to reoccupy our command center, we are no longer puppets being jerked around.

This essay was originally published during our study of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius last year.

In honor of our Groundhog Day, I have removed the paywall on this post. This year, Punxsutawney Phil forecasted six more weeks of winter. His forecast may be accurate, but we don’t have to retreat to any of our dreary mindsets.

We are just at the beginning of our study of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, and there are still many Burkeman sessions to come, as well as David K. Reynolds and Ralph Waldo Emerson later this year.

Asking the Most of Ourselves

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In Meditations 10.27, Marcus wrote, “Constantly bear in mind how everything that’s happening now happened also in the past. Bear in mind too that it will all happen in the future as well—entire plays with the same kinds of scenes, already familiar to you from your experience or from history books.”

The Hays translation of 10.27 is more striking; “To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.”

The television series Battlestar Galactica repeatedly used the phrase "all this has happened before; all this will happen again." The borrowing from Marcus telegraphed the end of the series. Many fans were angry, but for me, it was perfect.

(Note: Or perhaps both Marcus and Battlestar Galactica borrowed from Ecclesiastes 1:9)

But perhaps the most remarkable artistic representation of 10.27 came in the romantic comedy movie Groundhog Day. The late great Harold Ramis co-wrote Groundhog Day with Danny Rubin and Ramis directed it. Ramis was also involved as a writer, director, or actor in Ghostbusters, Animal House, and other comedies. While all Ramis’s movies entertain, Groundhog Day stands out for teaching perennial truths.

Ramis was a spiritual seeker, and we can wonder if he read Meditations.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh television weatherman. Phil and his producer, played by Andie MacDowell, are sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil, a cynical, burnt-out prima donna, goes through the motions to complete the assignment and is eager to return to Pittsburg when a snowstorm closes the highway. Phil is forced to return to the bread and breakfast in Punxsutawney, where he stayed the night before.

Phil has not even started to ask the questions Marcus does in 10.1:

Will you ever know what it is to be the kind of man who feels love and affection for his neighbors? Will you ever be fulfilled, wanting nothing, craving nothing, desiring nothing animate or inanimate to satisfy your pleasures—not time in which to enjoy them for longer, nor a place or country or climate, nor congenial people? Won’t you instead be content with present circumstances and find pleasure in the company of whoever is present?

When Phil wakes up the next morning, the clock radio is playing the same song it did the day before. Phil soon realizes everything is the same; it is Groundhog Day again. Initially, Phil is confused and alarmed as fate forces him to replay the same day over and over. Next, using what he has learned about his circumstances, Phil tries to seduce women and gain worldly riches. When neither women nor money changes Phil’s feelings of self-loathing; Phil commits suicide. That doesn't work either; he wakes the next morning to another Groundhog Day.

Phil has not learned what Marcus writes in 10.5: “Whatever happens to you was being created for you from eternity, and from eternity the web of causation was weaving for you not just your existence but this particular event as well.”

That might sound deterministic, but think about the “web of causation.” Given our choice to vacate our command center and given the beliefs that drive us, we live mindlessly on autopilot. We have to make a different choice to be mindful.

Is repeating Groundhog Day the perfect lesson for Phil?  Is repeating our own Groundhog Day the perfect lesson for us? After all, like Phil, our attempts to find happiness in circumstances haven’t worked out so well either. But mindlessly, we keep trying.

Over and over, Phil tries to find an outer cause for his inner state of mind. So when Phil believes he is upset because he is in Punxsutawney, he is absolutely wrong. When we do the same, Marcus would say, we are wrong 100% of the time. Our feelings come from how we process “impressions.”

There can be no compromise in expressing a universal truth, and Ramis and Rubin don’t equivocate. Phil continues to suffer as long as he believes that by manipulating his external circumstances, he can escape his dreadful feelings and be happy.

In 10.6, Marcus once again turns to the web of connections: “Whether atoms or nature, the first assumption has to be that I’m a part of the whole that is directed by nature, and then the second, that I’m related by affinity to parts that are of the same kind as myself.”

Gradually, Phil tries out a new way of being in the world. He starts to make real bonds with people he encounters in Punxsutawney. The problem is not in the world, the problem is Phil.

Phil begins to learn what the Stoics teach: The world we experience reflects our state of mind– the beliefs and emotions we rehearse in our minds.

In 10.24, Marcus again reminds himself, and we must do the same: “What is my command center to me? What am I making it at the moment? What am I currently using it for? Is it devoid of intelligence? Is it disengaged and cut off from society?”

For all of us, these challenging questions bring us to the brink of change. It is not clear from the movie how many times Phil repeats his day. Ramis and Rubin intended the events in the movie to represent approximately 10,000 days.

Does that sound extreme? Not to me. When we reflect on how many seemingly small patterns are hard to change, we know that Ramis and Rubin were in touch with universal truths. Indeed, the term groundhog day is now commonly used to convey being stuck in an unpleasant cycle of events.

After many, many days, something shifts in Phil. He realizes that if his perception of the world and his inner feelings are going to change, he has to make that decision first. And so, Phil switches off autopilot begins his mindful journey. With seemingly infinite time, Phil becomes a virtuoso pianist, an ice sculptor, and most importantly, someone who genuinely cares for and tries to help people in the town. Phil chooses his right mind and that releases him from Groundhog Day.

His relationship with his producer shifts because he identifies with his right mind and reoccupies his command center. Instead of trying to seduce her, he feels genuine love for her. Punxsutawney, once a living hell, becomes heaven on earth for Phil.

The shift to Love can be described this way: Phil starts ignoring his thoughts about "when I get this" or "when I escape from that" and chooses to live fully in the now. With “when” gone, only Love remains. Phil’s journey is our journey.

Phil didn’t add anything to become a better version of himself. He removed what was in the way of the better version that was always there.

Fear may arise as one contemplates choosing one’s right mind. Common concerns are that I will lose my personality and become a pushover. Ramis and Rubin tackle those fears. Having chosen his right mind, Phil is released from his dysfunctional encumbrances; he is vibrant and spirited about life. But is Phil a pushover? For many days, the old Phil is rude and dismissive to an old high school classmate who has been trying to sell him insurance. The new Phil buys a lot of insurance. When the sales agent asks Phil to dinner, Phil replies, “Let’s not spoil a good day.”

By accounts, Ramis walked his talk. In Caddyshack, Ramis has Bill Murray’s character relate a story about caddying for the Dalai Lama:

So we finish the eighteenth and [the Dalai Lama] gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

Perhaps better than any other movie, Groundhog Day teaches that our thoughts alone determine our experience of our world and that waiting for “when” to make a different choice is a dead end. The truths revealed in Groundhog Day come from “total consciousness,” so indeed, Ramis and Rubin had that going for them.

We have something going for us. Marcus is clear that our link to Nature can never be severed. Thus, we always have the power to choose between our right mind and our wrong mind.

In 10.38 Marcus wrote:

Remember that the puppet master controlling your strings is the power hidden within you. Without it, there’s no activity, no life—no person, one might even say. When you think of it, be sure never to confuse it with the vessel that contains it and the organs that have been molded around it.

As we choose to reoccupy our command center, we are no longer puppets being jerked around. Circumstances may look the same, but for us, what has happened before doesn’t have to happen again.