You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Ground Hog Day.
Do you ever wake up and say here we go again?
Winter mornings are dark and cold.
6:30am comes like a thunder clap in the night.
The alarm is a nuclear flash of noise that hurts your ears and makes your body convulse.
Can you open your eye? Is it welded shut with a slimy body excretion like some cod decomposing on the beach?
Can you push the blankets down without quivering from cold?
Does your brain suddenly fill like a soggy sponge with all the problems of the day?
Can you pay the bills? Will you get fired? Do your kids have enough to eat? Damn I hope the car starts!
Push this insanity away and move to the bathroom like a hobo on his third bottle of Night Train.
Do you have to grab the door frame to steady yourself.
It’s the tired routine of sameness.
Same sad toilet staring back at me. Same sink saying “hurry up and brush your damn teeth”
I look at the same old wash cloth hanging there and think. “I hate you wash cloth.”
The question is why?
I look in the mirror and say who is that craggy faced bastard? Where is the good looking dude who was in this very spot 10 hours ago brushing his teeth thinking he had the world tamed like a trained chimp.
How many times have I turned on the shower and let it run, staring at it, hating it?
The bathroom floor is cold and my toes are curling. The water is loud and shower curtain is not holding back the spray. It’s too cold and too early for cold water to be splashing me.
I force my hand into the luke warm water. Like I’m testing baby formula, I turn the knob hotter, wondering how much the hot water heater can crank out.
Somewhere in the garage I imagine Scotty from the Starship Enterprise screaming into his communicator “I’m giving it all she has cap’n”
Ground Hog Day.
I strip naked and shiver like a plucked chicken.
I quickly jump in the shower and pull the warmth around me like a liquid blanket.
I feel a rejuvenating pulse wash over my body.
Ground Hog Day.
As I grab the shampoo and begin scrubbing away the last remnants of sleep, thoughts of “I can’t” become “I can.”
I towel off and look in the mirror. “There’s my boy,” I think. He’s back.
Dress. Drive. Coffee. Traffic.
It’s amazing how I get to the same intersections at exactly the same time each morning. I see the same SUV with the woman who puts on eye make up while she drives.
Ground Hog Day.
I see the same Toyota with the stickers on the tailgate that show the driver’s whole family including the dog and a Jesus Fish. I see the same law man working the same stretch of 30mph road pulling over the same idiots.
Ground Hog Day.
I hit the interstate and it’s a four lane surge of intensity and anxiety.
I glance over and see automatons in the Ground Hog Day procession driving where ever.
The other motorists all look way too intense for 7:30 am. Are they going to work or to patrol the DMZ in North Korea.
They are juggling a steering wheel, a cell phone, and a cup of coffee while still keeping a middle finger free for aggressive self expression
“Keep your middle finger to yourself sir.”
Sure it’s a grind and it tends to feel like a conveyor belt of repetitiveness. But there in lies the challenge.
Like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day, who was using the new dawn as a chance to re-invent, to try something new, we must also seek innovation and welcome change.
I like to mix it up, to surprise myself. Even little things matter.
I’ll take a new exit ramp and drive on surface streets.
Hey I didn’t know there was a Krispy Kreme on that corner. Cool.
I’ll put on the Latin station and listen to a Spanish Guitarist pick the six strings like he’s dueling with the devil.
7:45 am and now I feeling bull fighting.
Ground Hog Day? KMA!
I get to work and say hi to the morning crew. Some are angry and look like their morning shower didn’t bathe away the previous day’s insanity.
I feel like tossing them a warm wash cloth full of possibilities but I am not sure it will do any good.
I grab another cup of coffee because God knows I need more caffeine.
It’s now 8:30am. It’s been two hours since the neutron bomb of sound woke me to another cold and frightful day.
As I watch GMA and sip on a delightful cup of Java, I think to myself that the world is at my fingertips and I just need to access it.
The point is, Ground Hog Day is only a state of mind.
Life is a treadmill if you let it be a treadmill.
The sun rises in the morning and sets at night as it always has and always will.
It’s what you do with the time in between that counts.
So the next time you wake up and look in the mirror and say “Who the hell is that?”
Smile and say, I know you dude. You’re the guy who is going to kick some ass today.
GROUND HOG DAY.
And that is crazy.