Groundhogs Can't Predict The Future

Punxsutawney Phil is a fraud.

I didn’t want to be the one to tell you that, but it’s true. Of his 128 predictions since 1887 (I guess if you’re a groundhog you can just take a whole decade plus a few War years off and still keep your job) he’s correctly predicted the weather just 39% of the time. No worries though, it’s all good. We’ll just continue to show up on the second day of the shortest month, don our finest top hats and tuxedos, make the pilgrimage to the sacred grounds of Gobbler’s Knob, watch them pull you from your tax-payer subsidized stumpdominium, and let you lie to our faces. Again. This is all your fault, Phil.

Except of course, that it’s not his fault, is it? Has anyone ever asked Phil if he wanted to predict the weather? Or if he wanted an entire holiday dedicated to his prognostication? Or if he wanted to be anything other than just a regular old run-of-the-mill groundhog? Of course not. The fact that they have to shake him awake just to get a prediction makes me think Phil probably doesn’t want anything to do with Groundhog Day at all. He’s just going along with it like anyone else. And in that sense, I can relate.

Like most groundhogs, I struggle with the future. If we’re being honest (we are) I have no real idea where I’m going in life. Quite frankly, I’m tired of people asking. Maybe it’s because the future is scary, and I don’t want to think about it. Maybe it’s because those inspirational posters plastered on the walls of my elementary school classroom never really sank in for me. Either way, I have never been great at dreaming big. Aim for the moon and you’ll land among the stars is great advice, unless you’re afraid of heights.

Unfortunately, as our rotund woodchuck friend knows all too well, the people want answers. Year after year after year after year. Since at least 1887. What do you want to be when you grow up? Where do you want to go to school? What do you want to do for work? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Any plans for retirement? Not knowing is not an option. Uncertainty leads to more questions - some spoken, some silent. You don’t know? How could you not know? Don’t you have any goals? Ambition? Aren’t you worried about your future? The crowd demands an early spring or six more weeks of winter, no in-between.

It’s all so overwhelming. Phil gets it.

To clarify, it’s not like I don’t think about the future at all - I do. Deep down I just don’t think the future is worth wasting time in the present on. Maybe that’s short-sighted (it is) and maybe it’s a little selfish (it is) but it’s how I feel most of the time.

Life moves fast.

Fast enough that when I focus on it, I get that unsettling feeling you have coming out of the ocean and realizing how far the current carried you from your spot on the beach. So I want to do everything I can to experience it before it ends. After all, at the risk of sounding like every person ever getting high for the first time, isn’t that the point of Life? To live it? To experience it while we’re here?

I wish I could say that I have it all figured out. That I have some unshakeable sense of self, unaffected by what anyone else thought of me. I wish that I could convey my exact thoughts about the future succinctly in a conversation. But I can’t. The reality is whenever the inevitable questions about my future come up from family, or friends, or coworkers, I give the canned answers everyone expects to hear. Because it’s easier that way.

So I suppose that means if Punxsutawney Phil is a fraud, then I am too. He tolerates the pomp and circumstance of his yearly appearance so, when February 3rd rolls around and the crowd disperses, he can go back to being a groundhog. Unworried about the weather. In that same vein, I keep my thoughts on the future to myself buried deep down (in the healthy kind of way) so when the conversation ends I can go back to floating aimlessly through life focusing on the present.

PS: According to the Inner Circle (the group responsible for translating Punxsutawney Phil’s message to the crowd) he actually has a 100% accuracy rate. Any “incorrect predictions” are simply classified as a mistranslation on the part of the Inner Circle. I strategically omitted this fact above because it didn’t fit with my narrative.