One Year On by you dont know me

Dear LOYAL readers, in honor of the one year anniversary of the Lost series Finale I have finally finished my Fishbiscuit. I have missed you! The final Fishbiscuit has been divided into 6 chapters. Enjoy! (PS I love you)

First off, the writers didn’t answer questions like, why is Walt special, the palette drop, why pregnant women can't come to full term... Etc. Over the span of the entire series Lost answered questions like, what is human nature, what are human nature’s limits, what is a parent willing to do for his child, what is sacrifice, is anyone capable of ultimate sacrifice, what is it be humble, what makes a good leader, what makes a bad leader, what are morals, how are morals defined, to what extent can a person go beyond their nature, what is good, what is evil, what is happiness, what is pain, how can you overcome misfortune...etc. Next time someone says Lost doesn’t give answers, take a page out of the smoke monster’s handbook and beat them up! Finish this sentence, I survived 6 years addicted to a TV show and all I got was ________.


End is in the beginning, they click together like a bracelet closing. The clasp is Jack’s eye opening in season 1 and closing in season 6.

PART 2: Chassidus in Lost
“Bringing heaven down to earth” is a common phrase within Chabad Chassidus. It means, don’t wait to find holiness when you get to heaven, we all have the ability to bring the holiness originating in heaven into the earthly physical world. The world is here so we can bring heaven, and holiness into it. One step further, this holiness isn’t somewhere far away, it is in this world, all we have to do is uncover it. Once we fulfill this purpose, we will be redeemed on a personal as well as global level. In Lost, the holiness that originates from heaven is the castaways souls. In the side-ways world they brought their souls together in the physical world to prepare for redemption. When the castaways finally reunited in the side-ways world/limbo, they were redeemed together. The sideways-world was bringing heaven down to earth.
Exile and Redemption seem to be polar opposites, however they are one. Redemption is found within Exile. Redemption, The End, can be found within Exile, The Pilot. In hebrew, the word Exile is Golah. The word Redemption is Geulah. The difference is Geulah has one extra letter, ‘Alef’. Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and Alef is equated to the number one. Alef indicates Holiness, when things are not separated, when they are united as one, they are how they are meant to be. They are in a state of fulfillment. When something has achieved fulfillment it is considered Holy. “In two ways, we are one: in our essence, and in our character. In our essence, we are all one soul, with one source. In our character, we are all complementary to each other, none of us complete, each one contributing what the other lacks, each one adding his touch of perfection to his fellow. Like a massive jigsaw puzzle, we fit together to make a single perfect whole. None of us is pe! rfect without all the rest of us. And all the rest of us are incomplete when a single individual is missing.” -Tzvi Freeman. And so, when you add ‘Alef’, fulfillment, unity, holiness, to Exile, you have redemption. All the castaways helped one another reach their purpose and heal each other. The characters reached redemption together, we share in that taste of redemption.
Just as the world cannot achieve redemption and the ultimate unity with holiness, without first being in exile, without the separation from holiness first, so too, Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Hurley and the rest of the gang could not be found without first being "Lost". What Chassidus also teaches is that exile and redemption are also one on a certain level because you can't have one without the other and part of our job is to access the sweetness of redemption in our lives now even as we sit in exile. "Lost" showed us how to do that, surely there was sweetness in Season One and all the rest that followed until the "Lost" were found.


Part 3: Defending Lost
The Pilot was two hours of the best cinematic television. The End surpassed that. To expect the finale and the final season all together, as a a technical answer, answer, answer episode/season wouldn’t be faithful to what Lost truly is about, the characters.
The characters letting go is a metaphor for the audience to let go. The Island’s mysteries were there to heal each character of their flaws. As much as we think the mysteries were there to be solved, the mysteries were there to be questioned. The mysteries made us look deeper into each character and move the character’s story along, and to help redeem the flawed characters.
These people over six years became real. They needed to be redeemed. To get the technical answers and not the redemption would have been an unhappy ending. And to get both technical answers and redemption would downplay the importance and beauty of what redemption looks like.

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.- Joseph Campbell

A finale needs to resonate and this finale will. We needed the undoing of the tragedy that these characters have been through the past six years, and by the characters letting go and moving on, together, they accomplished redemption. Live together, die together, move on together.

For us the mysteries and the intellectual engagement in the show was there to activate our hearts and emotions. To get to the heart, we go through the brain. The brain activates the heart. That’s why “The Source” was at the heart of the Island. To get to “The Source” Jack had to realize in his mind what his purpose was.

This was a review I found online before the season one finale aired, back in 2005. LOST is an ensemble character study of the highest quality. The stories put its characters into the most extreme circumstances the writers can imagine, while keeping the realism just barely within limits. The story consistently twists and throws the viewer off course, but maintains a steady course as it tells its tale. The complications of the story are interwoven throughout the episodes in a way that very few forms of media can match. As such, it is perfectly suited for its chosen format of television series, as it is not afraid to continue its story for what could be the entire series in length. At least so far, it seems to be written as a novel, with a beginning, middle, and end, in a continuous solid arc. With writers that are not afraid to kill off a main character if needed, and introduce elements that change the course of the entire show on a regular basis, LOST should sail di! rectly into history as one of the greatest tales ever broadcast.

I am not only OK with the lack of “answers” but applaud the choice to leave LOST up to interpretation. The show belongs to the fans. If Damon and Carlton answered every detail, the discussions would be over, the blogs would shut down, Lost may be over but we, the fans can keep discussing the small details the show left open.

Part 4: Details I noticed in the Final Episode
The official time of sundown, (AKA Shkiah) the night of the finale was at 8:15 PM.
If everything worked out in the sideways world and not in the Island world, it wouldn’t have been pleasing for us even if they were happier. The characters hadn’t grown together.
The opening sequence was visually beautiful, the way the cargo latch opened onto the tarmac.
Bocklin was the Oceanic delivery man who brought the coffin to the church. Arnold Böcklin is a painter best known for his five versions of the painting, Isle of the Dead.
Jack and Sawyer are both wearing blue shirts. Symbolizing they are on the same team, they finally made an alliance.
Flight Line motel. I love that they brought back dead castaways as well as “dead” settings. We revisited alot of props, (ie. Flocke was twisting up a rope, and Locke was killed by a rope.) Scenes and characters from seasons past. A great homage to the fans.
Kate told Jack on the Island, “Nothing is irreversible.” Jack told the same thing to Locke in the sideways world when he wanted to perform surgery on Locke.
When asked where Flocke was taking Desmond, Des responded, “somewhere with a bright light.” Which light was Desmond talking about, if he was aware of the sideways world, maybe he was talking about the light to heaven/afterlife in the church at the end.
Good Jack lines- “If I can fix you, Mr. Locke, that’s all the peace I’ll need.” Jack said to Des, “All of this matters.” He was right. Jack said to Flocke, “You’re not John Locke, you disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you’re nothing like him.” Couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Hell Yeah KATE killed MIB! PS- MIB had a name in the script, it just never made to TV...it was Samuel.
When Juliet said, “It worked” when she was dying on the Island in the season 6 premiere we thought she meant they created the alternate timeline. Really what she was talking about was the vending machine. When she gave Sawyer his candy bar after they unplugged it. She said “It worked.”
Part 5: The End
I was 14 when this show began, now I’m 21, it was my constant through my transformative years, I think it shaped the way I look at life, and the human condition. One thing I learned from Lost is you don’t have to become victim to the tragedy in your life, you can use it and transform it for good. And the connections we make and the situations we are put into are there for reason, and if we take every instance of our life and use it to progress, become a bit better than we were, then anyone can become a hero. Each character fulfilled their potential. We have the ability to triumph more than we know. Lost has given me this peace of mind and because it changed me it will live in me forever.

The story is complete. Now onto Lost’s the great Legacy. We know the beginning, middle and end. Legendary. Lost will go down in history as the best ________. In 10 years, lifetime achievement awards will be handed out to whoever worked on the show. It goes without saying, what Lost accomplished, no other show has come close. It is gratifying to be the audience that sat with Lost as it transpired every week. We have to recognize two unsung characters from the show, the Island and the music. Without either the show couldn’t have been the caliber of show it will be known as forever on.

Now that it’s over it feels as much a celebration as it does a funeral. The show deserves to be spoken about on a historic level, and now that Lost ended it will get the appreciation it deserves. When speaking about entertainment within the 21st century anyone would be remiss to not include Lost. Lost was groundbreaking in that it broke rules of how TV is supposed to be. We saw something very special play out. Look back on past seasons and appreciate the experience we went through.

More importantly, Lost will live on, not only in my DVD player, but in my life. In 5, 20, 50 years, It will be 8:15 AM, or someone will say “Guys, where are we?”, and I’ll smile to myself, and remember. Thank you for reading this every week. Thank you for living Lost with me. Lost is an original piece of work with its own legacy. I say Namaste for the last time as we set out into the sunset. For the first time LOST is waving “bye” from the shore and with a little bottle of sand in our pocket we sail into the future. The End.

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Part 6: Epilogue
How has this year been for you? How long did it take for you to notice Lost’s absence in your life? Did you learn the final lesson the show taught us? Did you let go?

It’s a copout to say Lost was just a TV show. It’s even a copout to say all it was, was a revolutionary one of kind TV show. We all know, whether we can admit it or not, we got something special from the show.

I may be over reacting, and maybe you don’t feel the same as me, that’s ok. But after taking a year to write this Fishbiscuit, I want to be completely honest and personal with you. I’d like you to know my experience with Lost. I hope you can take something from it.

For whatever reason, whether healthy one or not, I made Lost a huge priority in my life. I compared every person place and event that took place in my life to this show. For example, if the episode happened to center around electro magnetism, I paid close attention in my chemistry class that week. Everything in my life related to Lost. Every scientific theory, piece of literature, historical event, psychological concept, human emotion, mathematical equation, story from Torah, and every piece of Chassidus, I found a way to relate it to Lost. That was what many of my fish biscuits were about, the ways I found my life in Lost. By making the show into a microcosm of my life, in a way I married Lost. My life and Lost became one. I know it wasn’t healthy, but that’s what happened. I think Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, had their own Dharma-like experiments being tested on us, the fans. They created a show that included every topic of interest and developed it emotion! ally so the viewer felt the show meant something personally to them. They went into Lost wanting to create a cult classic. The only ending that could return the fans to sanity is the ending that played out. The End was like when the hypnotist claps his hands and the hypnotized person comes out of the trance.

It's the difference between Beatles fans and Elvis fans. The final message of the show was to let go. We lived a great life with Lost, and the characters lived a great life on the Island, with their fellow castaways, but we can't stay in side-ways reality forever, we have to move on and let go. Beatles fans were taught to “Let It be”. They were saying, there will come a time when the Beatles aren’t coming out with new music or going on tour, but its okay, just “Let It Be.” Elvis fans don’t have that, and some are stuck in side-ways reality, convinced Elvis is still alive.

Another thing, do you understand the meaning behind every Beatles song? No. Does that take away from their legacy? No. OK albeit, they were high and Damon and Carlton weren’t (speculation). But my point is some of you were unhappy with how Lost ended, and saw it as a cop out, but in the end, we were taught to let go, and go on with our lives. And that lesson, that answer is most important.

I survived six years addicted to a TV show and all I got was redemption.