Last year, I was asked what was the one piece of art that had profound impact on my life and why. It could be anything – novel, painting, sculpture, movie etc. Here is what I wrote:

Groundhog Day was released on my 22nd birthday. I saw it in the theatre. I can’t imagine a better gift from the Universe. It grows more powerful by the year. 

I’ve seen the film over 200 times in the past 30 years. Given its’ essential parable, this is appropriate. As a young man, I viewed it as much of the audience likely does, as an enjoyable, amusing Hollywood rom-com. That is an important part of its’ beauty. You can simply sit back and enjoy it. It is easily accessible to anyone. However, with each subsequent viewing, each passing year, the film reveals itself as an existential mirror. 

The line midway through the movie – “I’ve come to the end of me, Rita” – breaks me every time and really frames the film’s central universal message. That is, the paradoxical way to self-knowledge and, by extension, happiness, is through the negation of self and finding a space to be fully present in the service to others. 

This is a foundational principle of most of the world’s major philosophies and religions and to find it Trojan Horse’d so eloquently in Hollywood popcorn fare is brilliant. It is by no means a perfect film, but that fact that even a flawed artwork can convey such power is itself an inspiration. David Foster Wallace once wrote: “… it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”

For me, Groundhog Day is the essence of that, casting aside to need to be loved for the part yourself that can love, and finding yourself in that journey.