Take the leap!

Tyler Breece leaps into the arms of his mom Jennifer Wheeler at Wildwood Park Saturday, in Chico, Calif. Tyler has been alive for 8 years, but is turning only 2-years-old because he was born on a leap year.
(Jason Halley/Staff PHoto)

Happy Leap Day! In contemplating the leapyness of this year, I realized significant things happen in a four-year span: high school lasts four years, people (if they are lucky) graduate from college after four years, the Olympics happen every four years.

And of course, Leap Year happens every four years. Some fun facts about Leap Year you may or may not know: According to wikipedia it’s also known as an intercalary year, or if you want to make things spicy, a bissextile year.

The year contains one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected.
In the Gregorian calendar, which is the current standard calendar in most of the world, in each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a solar year by almost 6 hours.

You know what else has been called a leap? Faith.

I took a leap of faith when I moved to Korea for 6 months to teach English. I had never lived outside of the United States, had never even been away from my family for more than 2 months. I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know any of the other teachers. I was totally on my own and I was scared.

But it ended up being one of the best experiences of my life. The people I met broadened my viewpoints and I ended up traveling to cool places (like the Beach at Pusan), hiking up mountains with old people (who kicked my a$$) and amassing an awesome wardrobe on the cheap. My life is definitely richer and fuller from having gone there.

It usually takes courage to make a leap of faith; in fact, I would say fear is inherent in the definition of making a leap of faith. If you weren’t scared, wouldn’t it just be something fun you wanted to do?

I came across this quote: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to overcome it.” But I say, you don’t even really have to overcome fear. I was really scared when I got on that plane to Korea. I was scared all the way over to Korea. But I still got on the plane.

You can carry fear without having it weigh you down. It is possible to feel fear, but still do something. And it doesn’t have to be a big something, it can be a little something. Though they are called “leaps of faith,” all leaps and small steps start out the same: with forward motion.

One of my favorite movie scenes comes from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” It’s the one where Indy, played by Harrison Ford, and his father, played by Sean Connery (awesome acting team, but I digress) go in search of the Holy Grail. To get to the Holy Grail, they have to go through many obstacles. One of these is called the “leap of faith.” In this obstacle, Indiana Jones faces a huge chasm, way too wide to jump over, way too deep to climb into and out again. No way to walk around the pit to the other side.

There seems no way to get to the other side, but to take a leap of faith. But Indy doesn’t even take much of a leap. He closes his eyes and he takes a small step… and his foot falls on a bridge carved out of stone in such a way that it was camouflaged with the background scenery, making it invisible. With that one small step he gains confidence and is able to reach the secret chamber and find the grail.

In honor of Leap Day, I suggest we take a leap/step of faith today. It should be something you’re scared to do (I have found that the things I am afraid of doing are exactly the things that I should be doing). Not only that, but I also have found that the results are greater and better than I could ever have expected.

That’s the funny thing about leaps of faith. When you take them, you find you get more from them than what you initially put in. Try it, you might like it.

Jammie Karlman is the entertainment editor for the Chico Enterprise-Record. Contact her at buzz@chicoer.com. Follow her on Twitter @JammieKarlman