LOST

OK
So I haven't written anything for ages but now I'm inspired to share with no one in particular since, no one reads this anyway, but what the hell....

I did it. I watched the Final episode of Lost. Out of context and without seeing a whole bunch of episodes from season 6. I said I wouldn't. I said I would wait to buy the whole 6th season but I broke down.

Ya know what...

I loved it.

It was a masterpiece.

If you have seen it or taken a look at the incredible amount of reaction in the form of discussions and blogs, then you will get an idea of how divided people are about it and how many people are pretty unsure of what they have seen.

Here, for your perusal, is my take on the soon to be classic, Final episode of Lost:

To begin, let's talk about the major themes of Lost. To me clearly this show is about choice. The struggle between self-determination and fate or destiny. The struggle to discover what you are meant to do or be as opposed to what you choose to be. It's also about reason vs faith and how they interact and conflict with one another. Among several other themes that can be pointed out, overall I think the most prominent theme of Lost is life. As cliche' or vague as that may sound I think it is true. Life is messy, confusing, full of love, pain and discovery and every time you find an answer, what you have really discovered are just more questions.

Sound familiar...thought so.

If you have ever faced death you will find, among other things, two things to be true.

1. As the light fades you are going to the great beyond with loads of unanswered questions. There is plenty you will never know the answers to and that fact is ok.

2. As you lie there feeling death's cold fingers claw at you, while you may find yourself sorrowful over all the little things in life you enjoyed and will miss, your hobbies or work, your favorite places and activities etc.. you are going to be most concerned and pained by the separation of you and your emotional relationships- your friends, family, lovers, children, mentors, pets and parents.

This is the crux of human existence and what I believe defines us as a species. We are social creatures. We are defined and fulfilled by our relationships with other human beings, our love of other human beings as well as the many forms of love and passion we feel for so many aspects of life. It is what drives us and gives us the fuel of life to keep going. The most important thing in life for humans are-other humans.

That being said how does that drivel apply to LOST and the finale? Were you expecting answers? Definitions and cold hard proof? You've come to the wrong place with the wrong expectations my friends.

The message of LOST is the journey, not the destination. What really matters are the characters and their relationships to each other and to us. All the mysteries: What was the deal with Walt that made him so special, how did those Dharma people get there in the first place, what did those damn numbers really mean, was Vincent just a dog or some type of supernatural angelic metaphor, why wasn't Michael in the last episode..blah blah blah. All of that and a plethora more, is a backdrop to give context to the struggles and interactions of the characters. A crucible to burn them down to their raw emotions, personal truths and passionate essences. A tableau upon which we can draw and link our own emotion, pain and experience. Of course it must be entertaining so the events that these "every-men" find themselves in are a bit more fantastic than most people will experience but they are still challenges that we can relate to. Everyday provides new opportunities for common "heroism" in our mundane lives. Every choice we make further defines us and what we choose to be. This is the focus of Lost. The choices, ofttimes truly heroic, that these characters make in these extraordinary situations provides us with the emotional fetters that drag us along and make us want to be a part of their world and their lives because, in a very real sense, we already are. They are dealing with life and so are we.

The "why" of everything is not what matters. What matters is "how" the characters deal with the questions. It's not about whether we figure out life's big mysteries, it's how we live our lives dealing with not knowing and accepting the fact that we will never really know.

Lost does an excellent job of distilling the essence of life into a 6 season series. It captures the "mess" and confusion of life in a way that is compelling, evocative, frightening and incredibly touching. All the questions, answered and not, seem pretty metaphorical to me for the journey of discovery and the ultimate realization that the journey never, ever ends.

You cannot have your questions answered by someone else. You need to resolve the big mysteries for yourself. Lost is honest about that, as frustrating and painful as it may be, because it is absolutely necessary. If they just rattled off all the answers and tied up everything into a nice neat little package it would have been a horrendous fail. Life just doesn't work that way. To do that would be such a lie and thankfully, the writers and producers of the show realize this.

Another truism of life, so eloquently put by the Rolling Stones:

"You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes-you just might find... You get what you need."

Lost lives up to this by giving us just enough answers to provide context and make sense of the characters and their motivations and reactions. We need to understand Michael's obsessive and ultimately, self destructive love for Walt to understand and relate with why he does what he does. We do NOT need to know what's so special and magical about Walt to accomplish that. Thus there is an example of the many loose ends that your free to tie up anyway you like. Quite frankly it's much more fun, evocative and fulfilling that way. The writers have managed to tap the greatest source of raw artistic potential in the universe-the imagination of the spectator.
As a viewer I don't need answers to the questions spoon fed to me..I'll sort them out and draw my own conclusions, revelations, meanings and additional questions my self. I thank the show for respecting my intelligence enough to allow me to do that as well.

Any art draws its greatest power when it allows the spectator to take part in it. A good example are song lyrics. Have you ever heard a song that really resonated with you? Allowed you to draw correlations between your own experience and the lyrics and fill the song with a meaning and power very personal to you? I'm sure you have at least once. That music became yours in that sense. It transformed and became something much more powerful than the artist could have hoped for when you applied your own experience and interpretations and made it your own. Now what if the artist came along and defined that song for you..told you exactly what it meant..gave you the meaning behind every image and metaphor only to discover that it is something altogether different from what you had envisioned. How would you feel? Robbed and angry most likely. Something that was yours was just taken away from you in a sense. All the emotional links and ties you forged with that song have been shattered and although you may choose to ignore it, your experience with that music will most likely never be the same.

The above is an extreme case but it rings home my point. Lost is a different animal for everyone who watches it. It has so much room for the spectator to take ownership of it and inscribe their own meaning that to define it too far would be to betray the viewers and rob them of their enjoyment and the unique truths of Lost they have discovered on their own. If you wanted that definition, hungered for it and are angry that you didn't get it-your missing the point of the show.

That is why I feel the Finale was so phenomenally good and brilliantly done. We don't need to have all the questions answered, we need to know that the journey was worth it. That those things which are most universally precious to us were true and real and that not only have we become defined by them but empowered and set free. In the end it really is true: "All you need is love".
As we see all the characters reunited with those people that were most important in their lives , that they needed the most, in their own private purgatory after remembering each other and their lives spent both on and off the island, we are filled with hope that not only are our mundane struggles important and incredibly relevant, but that everything we have experienced on our journey, no matter how each of us have individually defined that journey, has been well worth it.

At the end of the show there was a great deal of things I was still pondering. Loose ends I was trying to tie together on my own..things that still didn't make sense to me. Despite all that I loved every minute of it. I loved it because it was the journey getting there that inspired me and emotionally rocked me and touched me in ways that no TV show ever had. Stop looking at everything going a hundred miles an hour, stop trying to define and categorize things, stop trying to take control because it's ultimately futile:

It's time to let it go. It's time to move on.

Religion really is a "smile on a dog".

Thanks for setting us straight Vincent. Hope your there to comfort me when I move to the other side.