How long was Bill Murray's character stuck in his Groundhog Day loop? I've read estimates ranging from 34 to 10,000 years. It feels like I've been stuck in my own loop for years now, but, unlike Phil Connors I don't seem to be learning anything from it. Just the same day, over and over again, with the only differences being the food and the pajama bottoms. Emails, video conferences, invoices, bids, cooking dinner, being excited when Janet gets home, eating dinner, watching a movie, going to bed. Repeat. Weekends are slightly different but we can't really go anywhere or do anything, so they feel like more of a small glitch in the cycle than anything meaningful or memorable.
It's said that ''Groundhog Day'' perfectly illustrates the Buddhist notion of samsara, the continuing cycle of rebirth that Buddhists regard as suffering that humans must try to escape. If that doesn't sum up 2020 I don't know what does. As we sit and wait to find out if our country will go back into an endless loop of anger, hatred and failure, it seems like we should be learning something, but we never do. America is in mortal decline, I have no doubt about that, but watching it fall is like watching an endless film loop of a building being demolished. It falls, it's back to normal, it falls again.
And so it goes.
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