Lost and lovin' it

I am obsessed with Lost. I admit it. I have every season on DVD. Every issue of Lost Magazine (except #1 -- if you know where I can get a copy, please let me know). I have all the action figures they made (they were supposed to make several more series but I guess I am one of the only people that bought them so they stopped -- why they made a Shannon and no Sayid, I'll never know). Next week it returns from its final season and I cannot contain my excitement!

There have been a lot of TV shows that I enjoyed but nothing on the level of this show for so many reasons. First, there is the obvious; this is no ordinary TV show. Every episode is like a short film. The way it's shot. The writing. The acting.

For me, I think that it's the underlying themes that really does it. Science or faith? For so much of my life, if I couldn't see it, hear it, feel it, it did not exist. Period. I was not dealt a good hand growing up. Most of my young life, I felt that I was unwanted. That nothing I did was good enough. That I was a mistake. It's difficult to believe in a benevolent higher power when you are living in that sort of misery. It's difficult to believe in anything. But there came a time in my life when I decided to grow up. If I was unwanted, so what? I am here. I have a right to be here. If the things I did were not enough to please certain people, so what? If I was satisfied with my own efforts, then that's all that matters. And if not, that just means I need to raise the bar for myself. If I was a mistake, so what? The greatest and most powerful lessons I've learned in life started out as mistakes and ended up as gifts. It becomes easy to believe in a benevolent higher power when you allow yourself to be human like the rest of the world. It's funny. You think that believing in "people" that you can't see, hear of feel as something childish, like Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. As you get older, you let go of these ideas. But I've never felt more grown up as when I believe in that intangible thing that binds us all together. But old ideals die hard. I still have this internal debate over which is the real truth; science or faith? Lost externalizes the debate.

I also love the theme of second chances. All the main characters on Lost have taken a wrong turn somewhere (no pun intended). They all feel that the choices they made determine the road they must always travel for their lives. But what if you were not condemned to the consequences of the choices you made? Not even the terrible ones? Can you find redemption? Would you chose to walk the path to it even though it is completely unfamiliar? If you were given the opportunity to return to the familiar, would you go back to your old ways?

I can go on and on for days writing about Lost. Maybe I will. But for tonight, I think I will just get lost and watch the back catalog.

It's amazing that a tropical island with healing powers and polar bears could be so much like our mundane lives. February 2nd can't come soon enough for me.

Namaste.