It’s Groundhog Day…Again!
Feb. 2024 NOTE: I first wrote this in 2018, but its relevancy persists. In these post-insurrection days, we must be ever more vigilant not to give in to despair.
Living the Same Day Over and Over.
Every year on February 2nd, I play the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” for 24 hours. I mix it up with versions in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian. If I’m working, I play it in the background. If I have to go out, I play a cassette tape of it on my Walkman. Yes, I’ve kept up this ritual for a long time. If you haven’t seen it, then before you read this, just go rent it — better yet, go buy it — right now.
Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is a Pittsburgh weatherman assigned to cover the festivities of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He sees the annual event as loathsome, makes fun of the locals, and can’t wait until it’s over. But a blizzard hits town, keeping him there another day. Inexplicably, when he wakes up, it’s Groundhog Day again. He’s in an endless loop.
As it dawns on him that he may have to relive the same day for all of eternity, in one early scene Phil complains over a beer to his two new bowling buddies, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same? And nothing that you did mattered?” One of the guys (Rick Overton) responds, “That about…
