When John finally got ready to leave the hospital, the doctor asked him if he had anybody to take him home. Although the question was quite a literal one, he thought about it on a lot deeper level. In a literal sense, his car was totaled, and he really didn’t have another way home. He had spoken with a nurse who was going to come into help him with some of his basic activities until he got back on his feet. What was most puzzling to him was Stephanie had promised she would give him a lift home. Where was she?
He called for a cab and thought about this all the way home. Although she absolutely felt like a twin soul to him, he knew very little about the logistics of her life, except that she was a teacher, probably an empath, and lived with her boyfriend. Perhaps it was selfish of him to think she could just drop everything in her life for him. Furthermore, perhaps she was wondering what his intentions were towards her, although he instinctively felt she knew how strongly he felt for her. Still, he had met her at a bar the first time they met and they had spent the night together. Perhaps she herself was no stranger to reckless behavior?
Arriving home, he realized it was Groundhog’s Day, which he had always felt was a strange kind of day of renewal. It was an annual tradition of his to watch the movie of the same name, and he secretly had always felt the movie was a philosophical masterpiece as well as being very funny.
He had come to this conclusion as a young college student when he first stumbled upon the idea of what Nietzsche called eternal recurrence. Essentially what Nietzsche suggested, was that it is a possibility that we are destined to live this same life over and over again, with all of it’s heartbreak, disappointment, loss, as well as joy. He acknowledged that this could be absolutely harrowing and depressing, but that there was also another possibility. What if this was the greatest thing we could hear? If this was an amazing gift of awareness that shocked us into some kind of heightened existential awareness? Anyway he also thought the movie was pretty funny, and settled in to watch it despite the fact that it was still quite uncomfortable to lie down.
After the movie ended, he though even more about the idea of eternal return as it related to his own life. Would he do it all over again? Suffer through all of the same mistakes and staggering and stumbling. He was almost sure he would, and right now, despite his body being in fairly significant pain, he was beginning to see the power of the journey itself.
He considered grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, but then thought better of it considering the amount of painkillers he was on. Every trip off the couch was a struggle, and he tried to plan each trip strategically. As the hours passed, he still had not heard from Stephanie, and he began to grow concerned that something might have happened to her. He knew she had his cell phone number, but wondered if perhaps she had lost it. He hobbled over to his home phone in the other room, which was also where his office calls were routed. Playing his messages he heard this-
“Umm John, hi.. I don’t really know what to say. I’m sure I let you down and I want to be honest about something. I felt something I had never felt before with you the other day, and honestly it scared the shit out of me. I thought I was on solid ground, and I wasn’t. I’ve been drinking for a couple of days now and don’t really know what to d know. I’m sorry I let you down.”
John took a deep breath and though a lot about what he had just heard. He thought he was the scared one, but at least for today, it seemed like things had changed. He felt for her a great deal, having been down the same road more times than he could remember. He thought back to Dr. Paul’s oft-repeated idea, that when the student is ready the teacher appears.
But what happened when the teacher had a meltdown?