groundhog day's life lessons

Groundhog Day is a great movie which I have seen many times. It has a lot of very interesting messages/ideas/concepts within it. It is very interesting to see the character transformation of Phil. I believe he reflects how many people act when something happens that is not in there comfort zone.

When he first began to experience being stuck in the same day, he was frantically trying to find new ways to escape it. After realizing that he was stuck and even death wouldn’t allow him to escape the situation, he began to cause mischief and harm his surroundings while benefitting his own self. Finally, he figures out to help himself and others as well as being a benefiter.

This reminds me, generally, of how people react to situations in life that don’t quite fit into our own preconceptions of how things are supposed to be. As a Muslim, I see this happening a lot now that Islam is at the forefront of news headlines and people are reacting to it. Before, the 9/11 attacks, nobody really even thought of Islam. Then the attacks happened and the initial reaction was to fight against Islam (although it had nothing to do with the attacks). So, we had the creation of the Patriot Act, the imprisonment and expulsion of thousands of Muslims from the US, and many Muslims’ assets within the US were frozen. Then, we felt like we had to cause mischief by invading two Muslim countries. Now, we are at a point where Americans are realizing that doing good and helping Muslims, just like other people, is actually more productive and a better policy for our country’s security and authority. The same thing happened with so many groups of people throughout history and is still happening with even the most common occurances in everyday life on the individual level.

Lastly, relating back to the cave, the man was released from his bindings but it was an unknown that set him free. In the movie, I felt like this unknown was Rita. Phil wasn’t expecting Rita to help him, but, it was her that really influenced him, not only to change, but to take advantage of his time by helping everyone and thing, not benefitting himself with self-satisfying pleasures. In the end, helping and befriending everyone was better and solved his problem more than being disdainful towards everything and fighting against it. I think we can all learn from Phil’s transformation.