Lost. Within our own lives, we all have been. We want what we don’t have, we yearn for the truth but are untrue to ourselves, we love people who hurt us and hurt people who love us. We struggle to break free from the molds of our parents. The assumptions we make about ourselves deceive us. We are very, very alone.
If you were disappointed with “The End,” perhaps you are still at the beginning of your own journey.
The end of Lost is not about answers. If that’s what you expected - if you’re a left-brained individual - you’ve probably had a very difficult time accepting the finale. You’re still searching for Walt. You’re still not sure who died, or when. You still don’t get the Smoke Monster. You’re pretty sure they all perished in a plane crash.
Whether or not you’re satisfied with the Lost finale says as much about your own life as it does about the characters. What is it that’s most important to you? Is it your travels around the world, or the people you’re going to see? The surgery you have to endure, or the ones who are with you when you wake up? Describing Lost as a story about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island is like describing your own life as the story of someone who is born, makes some choices, and dies. The end is NOT the important part.
If you can’t learn to live together, you’re going to die alone. We’ve spent six years falling in love with every character on the island, and we’ve witnessed the most important part of their lives – or at least, the most important part of Jack’s life. Their time on the island is what lifted these characters out of loneliness, weakness and darkness and gave them love, strength and light. In the end, the island is just a setting.
Lost is found within your own heart; it is found inasmuch as you have found yourself. Lost is the randomness of chance, the possibility of meaning, the power of our hearts and minds to save or to destroy us. It is the strengthening bonds of love, friendship and loyalty. The end of Lost is what we’ve always expected the end would be: the survivors would be found. What we didn’t fully understand, these past six years, is that the survivors were found the moment Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on the island. They were found each time they stood up for each other, defended each other, loved each other. They were found within that brief moment sandwiched between birth and death. They would never, ever have survived alone.
And neither shall we. If you don’t like The End because you haven’t received an answer, you’re not looking in the right place. Undeniably, the end of Lost has an emptiness to it. We all have yet to experience the full circle of our own lives. We’re searching within ourselves for meaning and searching for others to understand us. You would not be human if you did not feel something – jealousy? relief? – at the moment when each character “remembered”: It’s the moment of enlightenment; It’s your whole life flashing before your eyes; it’s the bright light we’ve all been told we’ll see and the loved one waiting at the other side. If we don’t receive the answers to all the mysteries in the world, maybe we don’t care. The only mystery that we need to solve is the one within ourselves, and more than anything else, we need each other (and maybe a dog) to get there.
1 comment:
I think you hit the nail right on the head. I think The End made it clear that the joy was in the journey, whatever road that might take. As you say, when on the plane, they were lost, and after they crashed, they each became found. And they knew it, as illustrated in their collectively created heaven.
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