LOST ended on Sunday to a mixed bag of reactions. Some thought the ending left too many questions unanswered. Some thought the loose ends weren't enough to overcome six wonderful seasons, even if the last ten minutes seemed like a cheap cop out and an acknowledgment that the writers had no idea what they were doing. I, on the other hand, loved the ending and thought it was the closest thing to perfect writing that I've seen in years (loose ends and all).
Part of my love of this ending is based on a very intimate knowledge of the writing process. I don't rank myself amongst the great writers or even the mediocre ones, but you can't work on a novel for five years without at least gaining an understanding of how this craft is done - even if I can't do it successfully. I quickly surmised that the writers couldn't possibly explain every little mystery by the end of Season Six. It wasn't that they didn't have answers, or that they didn't want to ruin the ending by revealing the answers; it was the fact that entertainment sometimes requires that readers be left in the dark. The same people complaining that LOST didn't give them the answers they needed are the ones who complained when George Lucas did give the answers in Episode One. The answers weren't nearly as fun as the story that was being told. How does King Kong get from Skull Island to New York? In the original film, its done with a Fade Out and Fade In and no further explanation. We don't really need to know that to enjoy the story. Many of the questions that had been generated over the years on LOST were of that variety. A few, deeper, questions were answered by seasons end because they were necessary to tell the bigger story but the vast majority of these questions were more of the variety best left to Behind The Scenes Featurettes on a DVD. That's just the name of the writing game sometimes.
I also loved the finale because it spoke to a greater truth than most stories have in years - we all need a certain amount of faith and mystery in our lives. Why did someone have to protect the Island? Because they did... you just have to have faith in that. And faith requires belief even when the answers aren't forthcoming. I suspect that many of the people who had problems with the ending of LOST also have problems with issues of faith.
I think the final reason I found myself loving LOST's finale was that I realized that I have changed a lot in the last six years. Even as I sit and write a meticulously plotted and planned novel that has every i dotted and t crossed, I find that personally I no longer need such an elaborately spelled out plan in my own life. In the last year or so, I find myself opening up to the possibilities of things I previously couldn't have imagined - like traveling to Kenya, for instance.
For years I read the Bible voraciously looking for some clue as to what it all meant. I figured that intellectually there had to be something in there that leapt out at me, that made sense to me, something that I could hang my hat on - some bit of knowledge that had eluded me in the past. I was looking for God in thought and equation, in details and answers. I wanted, more than anything else, for the universe to make sense. But God isn't in the details. God isn't in the answer. He is in the question. He can't be made sense of with a book, or a poem, or a film, or anything in human understanding. How can you explain a mystery without revealing the reason for the mystery? How can you explain God with human understanding?
I have come to embrace the idea of mystery, of NOT knowing, and, as a result, I have discovered more of God in one year than in the ten years previous. Those who were waiting for the last episode of LOST to explain all the mysteries like it was checking them off a list might have had their answers, but the final episode would have felt even more artificial than any other artistic effort in recent memory. Those who were disappointed missed the point. There were no answers coming. There never was going to be. The whole story of LOST was about characters who had been searching for answers all their lives finally realizing that none of it made sense and that it also didn't matter. What mattered, what was important, was loving one another.
I'll take that conclusion over some "answers" any day of the week and twice on Sunday's.
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