the power of love by malatesta

Different interpretations of LOST can all be true, even if they conflict. And here are suggestions for a type of outlook that can be chosen to good effect. As in viewing the finale, one has the choice to make it a good or bad experience, something fulfilling or a copout.

The key themes of LOST are, first, the hero's quest or adventure--represented by Jack and other male figures in their ways. These are Joseph Campbell like tales, Odysseys that should end in victory or epic defeat. An adult version ends in both. But how it ends isn't as key as how it goes.

The reveal and twist of LOST on this matter, however, is not merely that the journey is the thing, but that the archtypal female way is the way, and the end--by this I mean relationships, providing mutual help, support and forgiveness, and even learning how to ask for it--the most adult part.

Love is the way, clearly in LOST. It is the overriding theme for the LOSTIES--seeking and finding love It is the form of rising by which all people converge. Look at what gets the LOSTIES ultimately to epiphany and understanding. Look at what the good is and why everyone chooses to do good, to be noble and so forth.
Even the ability to let go, leave and move on occurs via community. Attachment is given up toward everything else, including one's own life and death. Yet everyone sits together on the plane to the beyond to NOwhere.

And last there is the classical theme of all classical religions which is one of striving, struggle, sin, forgiveness and redemption, based on an eventually committed love of the good. This converges with the hero's journey for the males, but not the females. They bind, help birth, provide the glue of relationship. Commitment to love and the good can involve just one ultimate sacrifice, as the end of Sayid shows, and Jack for that matter. Or it can be an everyday devotion--Hurley is best at "taking care of people," as Ben notes.

Religions started in ancient cultures. The island is strewn with the artifacts of them, and attempts of many to follow their paths or foul them--to foul them even by following them. This is a classical religious tale as well. The island is a junk heap of experimentation, most of it inadvertent. The final scene is of flight 815's junk heap.

As Gandhi felt, all the major religions lead to one destiny. But as Ben notes to Hurley, each religious leader or guardian may be able to do it a better way than before. That's what Abraham thought he was doing regarding Judaism over Paganism, and so with Jesus the Jew, Buddah the Hindu, Muhummud, the aspiring synthesizer, perfector, and transcender.

These hero archetype pertains to each male religious leader. But the end of their stories is in the community of believers, saints and the like. "Love each other."

If these sorts of culminations were what LOST was leading to in all its seasons, then much of what happened along the way was over-detailed and over-emphasized. Much of it would not make sense. On the other hand, all of the detail was indeed the characters' ways of struggling to do what they needed to do to reach the various milestones of life, whether they knew it or not. So it completely mattered for their struggle, but didn't matter except where it led to the milestones and their journey's end. We could not be more aware of this in our own lives and the lives of those around us.

It's worth combing and analyzing the detail then, but perhaps not for figuring out the end. What people plan for their journey, and how it often goes, typically does not figure into the end or the most important things in life. People don;t get all the answers they're looking for, nor doews how things turn out fit their expectations. "Is that all their is? So many scenarios left dangling."

One can choose to be disappointed and frustrated with this feature of life, or to focus on the good parts, the most important parts and find fulfillment in them--closure, if that's what satisfies. Similarly with the series and its finale.

The end of the finale fits a genre of movies that were very popular in the 1940s--the heaven movies, usually dotted with a few angels as main characters. They were very idealistic and forward looking, very naive also by our standards. But then there are films like Ghost, Enchanted April, and Grand Canyon, which handled issues of being angels and means of hope or salvation to each other far more subtly, bringing heaven on earth or earth to heaven.

The light on the island, in the time flashes and at the end in the church can stand for the non-attached indifference of a yogi or buddha, or the Christian conception of Heaven, or the gnostic conception of Shambala/Shangri-la, or the Hindu conception of Nirvana, or the true humanist bliss of a loving family, circle of friends and life, followed by the loving memories of you in those one has blessed and been blessed by.

One can get to the light by first resisting the light, but being haunted by the light, moving toward the light, letting it pour into you, thus living in the light. And it need not be some magical thing or even electromagnetic thing (though physical light is electromagnetism). It can be merely personal goodness that treats people well. That would be the UU version of the finale, and the humanistic one.

Everything going black is life without spirituality, Everything going white is more or less the same thing--mono-colored--isn't it? But one can choose to find in death peace or oblivion, in life, happiness or disappointment. Even those with poor and tragic lives often find happiness. Some with every advantage find no joy. It's how we choose to orient to it and struggle to be able to choose.

It would be nice to see more theories with these sorts of positive and weighty components. Purgatory, sideways realities or fantasies--who cares?