it's about time, and the movie Groundhog Day.
most of us remember that movie, right? Bill Murray plays a sour, self-important TV weatherman who hates doing "Groundhog Day" duty with Punxsutawney Phil every 2 February, so he's condemned to repeat that single day endlessly, starting with the same buzzing of a hotel alarm clock.
funny stuff. it's too bad Murray didn't undergo any gnostic enlightenment while making the movie (or during Scrooged, either) but I doubt that the Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking experience is likely to lead to gnostic experiences. (I suppose it depends on the drugs of choice among cast and crew.)
anyway, reliving the same day over and over must surely be wearying. we see Phil going through the same morning routines, over and over—the same alarm clock, the same encounters with people in the streets, and so forth. it seems intuitively obvious that any of us would soon get tired of having the same few interactions over and over. good thing that never happens! right? (...right?)
but...suppose it wasn't a day. suppose it was an entire year?
how might that go?
imagine Phil again, not a newscaster reporting on a Groundhog Day ritual day after day, but someone in a routine job. like Truman Burbank in The Truman Show or "Mister Anderson" in The Matrix, Phil's a "salaryman", a man of set ways and set expectations.
suppose he wakes up the morning of 1 January 201x (or 202x, or any decade I suppose) hungover and bleary from the night before, having stayed up late for the New Year. Phil blinks his eyes blearily at the clock and calendar and at his personal computer and cell phone if he has them; they tell him it's 1 January 201x. "oh yeah. that's what year it is now." New Year's Day celebrations have him a little muddled but soon he gets enough reminders of what year it is.
and Phil lives out his routine year, ups and downs, then arrives at New Year's Eve. he stays up late carousing, waits until after the year's changed over, finally tumbles into bed and eventually awakes, after uneasy dreams, with the Sun shining through the window and a calendar that reads 1 January 201x. not 1 January 201{x+1}, not the next year...but the same year. the same value of 'x' in 1 January 201x.
...would Phil even notice?
~Chara of Pnictogen
