Yes, I’m adding noise to the chaos of LOST blog posts this week and sharing what I think…
I first started watching LOST midway through the 2nd season.
A few friends had been hooked from the beginning and convinced our group of friends to do a marathon through the first season [I think we did it in under a week]. I was hooked from the first episode… and for the past five years, I’ve wondered where the polar bears came from, what the “black smoke” was, had about a million different theories about the Dharma initiative and in more dorky moments spent time reading Lostpedia to check my facts.
So, as was the case for most fans, Sunday’s finale was a bittersweet moment.
And the truth is, I’m going to miss it.
I can’t think of many episodes of LOST that I watched by myself. It was something that I experienced with other people. It created new friendships, gave instant rapport with total strangers, and created community… all around a crazy TV show.
Aside from the sci-fi, fast forwards, flash sideways, and backstories, the human drama of LOST is what captured me. All of the characters had unique stories, who, despite their flaws, were trying to make sense of life.
One of the definitive lines of the entire series to me was the simple idea, “Live together or die alone.”
To me, LOST was about the intrinsic need we have for community…to know and be known.
All of the characters on LOST were, well… lost. They were alone in their own pain and empty quests to make sense of life or to find themselves and their destinies, but it wasn’t until they encountered one another and entered into one another’s stories that they began to find life and meaning. They needed each other.
I think one of the reasons people connected with LOST so much [besides the fact that it was absolutely brilliant storytelling], was because they saw themselves in the stories of the characters. Their experiences may not have been as extreme but it’s all the same… we saw something in all of the Oceanic 815 survivors and characters we met along the way. [For the record, Desmond was my favorite.]
We need people and what LOST gave us, more than a good water cooler conversation or some of the dorkiest viewing parties any of us have ever been to, was the realization of the power of our story and the power of community. They are interconnected.
As cheesy [or Titanic-like] the ending scene was, it brought everything full circle… we’re all connected, we need each other, we need community, and as my friend Justin eloquently mused, everyone is OK.
I can live with the unanswered questions and will entertain all of the theories that the die-hards will come up with, but what I’ll miss is what LOST did… it brought people together.
