Zen and Our COVID 'Groundhog Day'

The other day, an old friend of mine and I were chatting on the phone about our COVID experience, and he mentioned, with a dry chuckle, how it's been like Groundhog Day: every day pretty much the same. He was referring, of course, to the 1993 Harold Ramis film, a modern classic in which a self-centered weatherman (Bill Murray) wakes up every morning and it’s the same day, February 2, Groundhog Day -- again and again and again. I immediately recognized that my friend's insight was spot-on. While this past year has indeed been like no other, the days within it have felt remarkably similar: every morning, we wake up, and life is more or less the same. Stuck at home in the same old place, seeing the same old faces, having the same old conversations—and, at the center of it, unchanged and unchanging, the same old you.