If you talk to most Minnesotans, they will probably admit to a certain feeling of what we call in our house ‘Groundhog Day’. Taken from the movie with Bill Murray where his character is destined to live the same day over and over again until he learns to be a nicer person and love his life, these February days have a similar feeling. The snow that has been with us since late fall, and continues to want to renew itself, provides the perfect monochromatic backdrop for these feelings. The sameness outside mirrors the sameness of daily activities that are itching for change. For spring. For green. For a glimpse of renewal of life.

So yesterday I left the office after a day of doing wonderful things, normal things that needed to be accomplished, things that had been done in a similar way the day before and the week before that. I made my way onto the freeway heading east. I had barely made the courageous merge into traffic when my eyes beheld a big surprise,a startling sight. A large black SUV was pulling a trailer with an enormous silver statue of a horse on it. Galloping along at rush hour speed was a ten to twelve foot tall horse that look like it was perhaps made out of chrome car fenders. Patch worked together with various segments of silver this stallion was an impressive sight. I shifted lanes to follow the horse as if to be its guardian protector. Coming up on my right I noticed a car, driver’s side window rolled down, the driver holding their phone out to snap a picture of this amazing vision. To my left the driver on their cell phone seemed oblivious to the racetrack they now traveled.

The traffic changed and I slipped out of my lane to pull up beside the mighty horse. I galloped alongside for sometime until the cars in my lane slowed down and for awhile I lost my place beside this mighty horse. My mind then slipped to our oldest son who had been such a horse lover as a child. I longed to participate in some time travel experience, to have him in the car with me, a young boy,knowing the sheer joy he would have had at this beautiful sight. By this time I was once again riding along side this steed, flanked by its surprising gift to my day.

Soon it was time for me to exit. I could not follow this equine art into the sunset. It was time to return to the normal flow of my February day. But I did so with a renewed spirit, with a lift in my chest and a smile on my face. Just when I thought all these days were grinding away in the depths of the white landscape, one the same as the last, a silver horse showed up and surprised my senses and filled me with joy.

It was an important reminder to stay awake to the possibilities of each day. No doubt all days, no matter the similarity to the days that went before, have a surprise or two tucked within. Our work is to keep our eyes open and our hearts ready for whatever the big surprise of the day will be. Like Bill Murray in ‘Groundhog Day’ we need to be ready to fall in love with every day and what it will offer.

Sometimes those offerings include enormous horses. Happy watching!

“A horse is the projection of peoples’ dreams about themselves – strong, powerful, beautiful – and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.”
~Pam Brown