In the words of Colonel Jack O’Neill. “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try again”.
This is one of my favorite SG1 episodes and is a day where the events of the day repeat themselves over and over. Yes, just like Groundhog day. It is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human.
Why am I talking about it now? I think in our daily life we tetter-totter between absolute mind-numbing boredom and too much excitement/stress. When we are bored we do things to make our life exciting, and when we are excited and stressed we try to retreat and make our lives boring. We never seem happy where we are and what we are doing. Thanks, Yoda!
Isn’t it remarkable that each day can give us the wide variety of pleasures and pains that we experience? Yet as much as I would prefer to avoid the pain, I can’t. I just have to accept it as part of life and not dwell on it. I also have to accept the joy and pleasurable things in life, but not dwell on them either.
I can hear you saying “Why wouldn’t you want to dwell on the pleasure?” Lots of reasons. People who have addictions try to increase the pleasure in their life and avoid pain. It’s not realistic. You can’t use sex, drugs, money, or anything to avoid life. All you do is make your life worse by not addressing things that need to be improved to be happy. I learned that if I just take the bull by the horns and address directly what is causing me a problem, things go much easier in life.
We see people who try to avoid consequences in life, and ultimately you can’t. You may avoid the law or consequences for a while, but eventually, it will catch up to you. Interest and deferred attention to necessary things in life is just terrible situation to put yourself in. Don’t do it.
Jack dealt with this situation with grace and didn’t become a monster because of it. I wonder sometimes what I would have done in his place. Could I have faced the same day for countless months? We don’t have to do that in life. Life is fortunately unique and for that, we should all be glad.