or "What Would Gwen Stefani Do?"

by Alexandra R. Yaremko

When in a pinch, a bind, or when you hit that proverbial three miles of bad road with only a fork at the end of the stretch (or worse yet, when the ship starts going down), people turn to a variety of things for assistance, comfort, and guidance. The list of what people turn to is endless. But we all know someone who has used one or more of the following to see them through the stretch.

I had an uncle who once said, "If you want to get rich in this life, get involved in the business of human misery." Happy Hour, anyone? Very few among us have not been guilty of overindulgence in this arena at one time or another. And often when this tap runs dry, people have been known to move on to other things. Religion, for example.

The theologian and scholar Paul Tillich defined religion as an individual's ultimate concern, which seems like a feasible possibility. At the top of this list has to be money; hey, it happens. Closely related, or maybe not at all, is work. Then there are things to ingest: again, happy hour, coffee (a particular favorite of mine), wine tasting, chocolate or food in general. Barbecue is deserving of at least a paragraph, but I have to go to one later so time is short.

However, the things people ingest have nothing in ultimate concern potential when stacked up against sports and games. Golf has to top this list because of the participation factor. Football, basketball, and NASCAR fans participate in their respective sports, but mainly as fans, or as part of the office pool. Once someone finds golf, they're in, they're hooked, they're moved by the spirit of Harvey Penick.

Games, whether board or card, can rate high on this scale. They've been around, some forever, serving a purpose. Think Peggy Hill and "Boggle." Video games are too new to be classified as a religion per se. So they may have to be classified as a cult. I'm not a fan of video games, and isn't that what we do when we don't understand or like someone else's religion, call it a cult?

Music, "the sound track of our lives," permeates from waiting rooms to restaurants, to home. Not that I'm complaining. I'm an adherent. I need music to clean the house and I need a lot of it when driving on particularly long trips. If there is any question that music can be an ultimate concern think Dead Heads.

Ultimate concerns all have leaders and sacred texts. Ultimate concerns, to paraphrase a Supreme Court Justice and what he said in reference to pornography, can't necessarily be defined, but you know it when you see it. Especially in your neighbor.

If you are wondering what your ultimate concern might be, here are a few guidelines. If you talk to your friends about it (and they just look at you and nod their heads), your weekends are consumed by it, and you have bought more than one book about it, this could be your ultimate concern, or, your religion. So many times the things that get us through can become our ultimate concern.

So, last week I'm driving along thinking about a decision I had to make. Intellectually, I understand that no-choice-is-a-choice and even though I hate that sort of decision-making, I have been guilty of sitting at a fork in the road all too often. In the CD player was "No Doubt," the very CD I had given my best friend for Christmas and she has been kind enough to lend me since oh, February.

Then, the epiphany came. "What would Gwen Stefani do?" And why not? She's no longer sporting that red dot on her forehead, which just goes to show you she's like the rest of us and can rebound from a bad decision. However, why not take an aspect of an ultimate concern and make it work for you.

Last week, every decision I had to make was based on the mantra, "What would Gwen Stefani do." So I've decided to marry a British Rock Star. And then I decided to keep on dancin'. I may even right a song.