I'll admit that I've only watched the first season of LOST and the first show of the second season, yet even in that short time, I've learned a few things. The first two things I've learned is that 1) Sometimes, I think waaay too much, and 2) Sometimes, I watch too much television. In spite of these two "revelations", I find it interesting that I or any other t.v. viewer can take a fictional show and actually relate parts of it to REAL life...and use this relation to make ourselves better.
Before I sound crazy and you stop reading, think about the fact that everybody on this show is running from something. Of course, it's obvious that Kate is not only running from the law, but she's also running from the memory of her best friend that she inadvertently got killed, and the man she herself killed. There's Sawyer who's running from the man he killed while trying to forget the memory of an abusive father who killed his mother and then committed suicide, and while Sawyer is running from this, he also has to pay accountability for his grifter past. Hurley is trying to escape a self-inflicted "curse" that he feels he suffered because of a group of numbers. Sayid is running from a past life of a Iranian soldier while ducking American eyes of being profiled as a terrorist and running to rekindle a past connection.
Locke is trying to run from a mundane and handicapped life where he heard, "You can't do that" a lot. This life seems to have been forced on him because he trusted someone who claimed to be family yet betrayed him. Because of this, he seems intent on manipulating people to avoid being let down by anyone else. Jin is trying to run away with his wife, Sun because her father is apparently the Chinese version of William Fisk a.k.a. Kingpin(google the name if you haven't heard of him) and he doesn't want to lose the little goodness he has left in him after doing all the evil that Sun's father has commanded Jin to do. On top of this, Sun is trying to run away from her husband because she feels that the man she once loved is a stranger no longer to be trusted. Then there is Micheal, a man who lost the woman he loved because she wanted more out of life than she thought she could get with him, and Walter, the son he never got a chance to know. Now with Walter being a teenager, Micheal is running from having anything to do with a son he once loved as a baby, but now knows nothing about since the two of them have been living in separate countries and are worlds apart.
There's Claire, the pregnant mother who not only had a runaway deadbeat dad, but now questions her chances of survival as a first time single mom. Charlie is a washed up musician who is running away from a heroin addiction that has cost him several meaningful relationships, a music career, and a job, but he manages to find this same heroin demon on a deserted island(of all places). Then there's Jack...a doctor who is one of the central characters who is running from being known as the hero and ducking the responsibility of being the go-to guy that everyone calls on whenever there is trouble. He's also running from the pain of blaming himself for his alcoholic dad's mistakes.
There you have it...the cast of LOST and one central theme...running. We all have demons and other mistakes that we are trying to live down one way or another. We can always run from our demons, but the truth is that those demons are always one or two steps behind us and we can never run for the rest of our lives even though some try to. We always end up facing one realization...those things we are running from eventually catch up to us. The best thing any of us can do is to stand and fight our demons because even if we lose, we still have the knowledge that we fought our mistakes with our dignity intact. We also know that our best chance to live free of our problems is to stand and fight them until we are finally victorious, and winning only happens when we stop running.
This ends tonight's life lesson and in closing...if LOST turns out to be somebody's "dream" or if the show fades to black à la The Sopranos, I'm going to find J.J. Abrams and shake the mess out of him.
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