February 2, is Groundhog Day --

February 2, is Groundhog Day. My associations with this quasi-holiday are less about a groundhog’s prediction about the beginning of spring, and more about the movie Groundhog Day.

In the movie, Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is a cranky, cynical weatherman who, while on assignment covering the annual Groundhog Day Festival, finds himself re-living the same day, over and over again.

(Which reminds me of a scene from another movie: in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, when Mickey reflects, “Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said the life we live, we'll live over and over, the same way for eternity. Great. I'll have to sit through the Ice-Capades again.”)

Noticing that Groundhog Day was approaching prompted me to reflect: “If I had to re-live one day over and over, what would I want to do with it?” I’m such a lover of routine and familiarity that my perfect day wouldn’t be made up of anything very dramatic or exotic. Just reading in bed, for example, would take up several hours.

I asked some friends what they’d do during their perfect days, and the striking thing was how…attainable…these perfect days were. Several people distinguished between “a perfect day at home” and “a perfect day while traveling,” and one friend’s perfect “home” day was a Saturday morning trip to the green market, an afternoon trip to Whole Foods, a few hours spent cooking something challenging, and friends over for dinner. That isn’t an impossible dream! But when I asked how often she spent a day this way, she said, “I don’t know why not, exactly, but I can’t remember the last time I spent a day like that.”

So Groundhog Day makes a good yearly spur to ask: “What would my perfect day be?” It might be easier than you think to arrange it.