My LOST Life: Something Like an Analogy

So after reading this article entitled, Why it's OK to be Lost and Confused, I had an epiphany: Life is a helluva lot like LOST. More specifically, life is like the extended version of LOST: confusing as eff, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because you'll be with the ones who mean the most to you.  LOST, life...both start with 'L.' Coincidence? I think not! There's no such thing.  Everything happens for a reason.  One should not mistake coincidence for fate.  Is it fate that life parallels LOST so greatly (Or is it the other way around? No one will ever know!)? Is it fate that I feel so lost in my life right now?  Is there such thing as being 'un-lost' in this crazy world? Honestly, do any of us really know what the hell we're actually doing at any given moment? That's what I thought. 

With the looming day of freedom, otherwise known as graduation, drawing nearer and nearer, I find myself struggling to have my life all neatly laid out and wrapped up in a pretty bow, so that once I'm handed my diploma, I'm off to the land of successful, self-providing adults. But the more that I try to do that, the more I realize I have no idea what I want to do with my life.  But in this realization, I am finding comfort and am slowly becoming more accepting, even if my parents haven't, of the fact that maybe I don't need to have the rest of my life planned out.  In a recent stroke of genius (and my motto for 2012 of DGAFin' it), I decided to let it all go.  I've let go of the worry of possibly, leaning towards probably, not finding work, of the embarrassment when everyone else is talking of graduate school, of the flustered and insincere response when asked what I'm doing after graduation, of the shame and guilt I feel whenever I discuss with my somewhat disappointed parents my taking a year off to live in Australia, of doing what I feel is expected of me.  

I can't say that by letting go of all these negative emotions I've finally figured it all out or discovered all the answers to life's mysteries; I'm still pretty lost.  But it's being at peace with that that has made me feel so much better.  As the author of the article put it, 

"Every day I am crumbling more apart and yet falling more together all at the same time."  I feel like I have to break down all of the negative walls and facades I've put up in order to start putting my life together the way I want it to be, and not with someone else's expectations.  

Not until we are lost do we begin to find ourselves. -Henry David Thoreau

You could not be more right, my friend.  And he should know. He spent two years living in a cabin in the forest his buddy, Emerson, owned.  If that doesn’t sound like a guy a bit lost, or maybe just a little confused, then I don’t know what is.  Maybe he thought he had found Jacob’s cabin and was waiting around to give Ben some directions.  And after stumbling and feeling my way through (blindly at times) almost four years of college, I feel like its purpose (for me at least) was to point out the things I don't want to do, not the one thing that I want to do with the rest of my life.  And I think it's better that way. Maybe that’s how life is supposed to work.  You go from one experience to the next, learning a little bit more about yourself along the way.  Do I really want to have just one thing that I want to do for the rest of my life? That sounds pretty boring. There’s so much I want to do, so many places I want to see, why should I limit myself to picking just one?  I had a conversation about this need to find ‘what I’m supposed to do with my life’ with someone like my best friend a while ago, and she had some pretty wise advice.

"I feel like school is keeping me from doing what I want. But at the same time, I don't know what that is." -Me

"Well, that thing that you want is something only you can find and how you find it depends on how you live your life…And I think you're just not looking at the big picture.”           –Someone like Nat

“What's the big picture?"

"Well, where do you see yourself in ten years? Just like hobbies, interests. And then, what kind of people do you enjoy being around? What type of conversations do you like having? What motivates you, in your studies, when you work out? What keeps you going? What do you feel passionate about? All these things, they point to a direction if you think about it."

"Ya, I just feel like I'm waiting for this 'light bulb' moment where I find something that I just know I want to do, but I haven't felt that yet."

"Well, if you rush it, you're never going to feel it."

            And she’s right.  I really like how she put it, that this ‘purpose’ is something only I can find and how I find it depends on how I live my life.  So I’m just gonna keep living my life, taking chances, and taking advantage of all the opportunities that come my way.  Besides, what’s the worst that could happen if I let go of needing to know all the answers? 

“As humans, we have a strange compulsion to figure everything out and to turn unpredictability into certainty. I wanted the answers to come to me like a flash of lightning. I imagined that this was how life worked; that I couldn’t be happy until I had every detail of my life squared away. I wanted to know what my ‘calling’ was and who my soul mate was and where to find happiness and when life would finally make sense. I wanted to know who the heck I was.”

I find this especially true with me.  Maybe it’s how my brain is wired, or my logical, science-y (real word) way of thinking through problems and situations that makes it difficult to accept that not everything in life is figure-out-able (again, real word).  And as hard as it is for me to deal with the mysterious ways of life, letting go of the worry of it all has been so freeing.

“Maybe life is a never-ending mystery, and your only job is to learn to be ok with that. It doesn’t have to be a scary thing; instead, it can be freeing. Once you can learn to trust and to feel safe within this blanket of a universe, then you no longer need to cling to a certainty that just doesn’t exist. You can rest in the questions; you can live in the bittersweet mystery.”

            Besides, I think being an avid fan of LOST has prepared me to ‘rest in the questions’ and to live in the ‘bittersweet mystery’ of life.  It didn’t take very many episodes for me to realize that there was no way I was going to figure this show out.  Each week, when the screen went black and ‘LOST’ popped up, I’d be left with my face scrunched up in a ‘what-the-what?!?!’ look with my mouth slightly agape.  It made me crazy, but I was okay with it.  And I couldn’t wait until the next week to do it all over again.  Why it took me so much longer to be this accepting of the mysterious, crazy ways of life?  I’m not so sure, and I can’t put a number to the times I’ve thought to myself, ‘what the what?’ (and that’s so Raven, but that’s another story for another time), in my life, but I’m quite sure it outnumbers my LOST ‘what the what’ moments by at least a scagillion. 

            The moral of this blog: it’s okay to be lost, it’s okay to watch LOST, and it’s definitely okay to compare life to LOST. It’s okay to let go of the questions that can’t be answered and the need to answer them.  It’s okay to let go of other’s expectations of you.  Because like the old adage says, life is about the journey not the destination. Just watch the finale of LOST.  Did they answer any of questions brought up throughout the course of six seasons? Like what the hell that huge bird/pterodactyl was or why it was squawking Hurley's name?  Or why Walt was so special?  Or what was up with that black horse Kate kept seeing? No, not really. Did it matter?  No.  The point of the finale was to prove that in the end, the show (life) wasn’t about finding the answers to the island’s (life’s) many mysteries; it was about the relationships created, the people met, the decisions made, the fact that no one does it alone.  It’s about looking into the eye of life and finding something beautiful.  It’s about progress.

            See you in another life, brotha!

And since I sprinkled in LOST quotes here and there, I had to include this one, but it didn’t really fit, so I’ll just stick it at the end here:

"Please don't give up, Des. Because all we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us. And you have her. I will wait for you. Always. I love you, Pen." 

That's good stuff right there! Gets me everytime!

Here is the link to the article that was the inspiration for this post: 

http://www.theunlost.com/life-in-general/what-to-do-when-youre-lost-and-confused/

Just in case you're feeling generous (Is it bad that I have yet to see the bonus footage from the Season 6 DVDs? Shh! Don't tell!) :

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Complete-Collection-Jorge-Garcia/dp/B0036EH3WU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328772709&sr=8-3