I made the mistake of watching Groundhog Day for the first time during the summer I was studying for the bar exam. I was trapped in the living nightmare of studying the same material, every day, with seemingly no end in sight. The tragedy and central comic conceit of the storyline, that of the main character, weatherman Phil Connors, being forced to relive the same day—Groundhog Day—perfectly captured my angst, and I laughed at his pain because I shared it. As sheer entertainment, the film served its purpose of distracting me for an evening, but I caught glimpses of certain spiritual lessons to be gleaned from Phil’s journey lingering beyond my grasp at the time, stretched as I was to the breaking point. Now, five years past that terrible summer, the regular rhythms of work and the settled everyday humdrum of existence have lulled me into a similar impatience and dissatisfaction with life. On this Groundhog Day, however, the film’s 30th anniversary, I have finally found the time to devote to understanding the lessons the film tried to teach me on my initial viewing and to applying them in my life.
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