From “Julie’s Gems”: April 2002

I tend to think of strange things as I lie awake in the middle of the night. This month’s column is based on one of the ideas that came to me during such a time, so bear with me! One of my favorite shows is “Jeopardy.” If you stop and think about it, life is a lot like “Jeopardy.” You win or lose based on your knowledge, and there’s always someone out there that seems to know all the answers. You can be at the bottom of the heap and feel like you are going to lose it all, but then comes the Final Jeopardy round. You figure, what the heck, you may not know much about Russian literature, but you’re going to take a leap of faith and risk all the money you have. To your great surprise, you remember that Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov. Your opponents that were ahead of you do not remember this fact, and end up losing everything. You are the new “Jeopardy” champion! Hopefully you can see the picture I’m trying to paint here. Even when you think you’re about to lose, you take one last risk, and suddenly you’ve achieved more than you ever dreamed. So even when you feel you are at the bottom of your barrel, don’t give up. You may not win money on a game show, but you will win the sense of self satisfaction; not that you beat someone else, but that you took a flying leap of faith and landed on your feet.