The Finalies

I like most things. Most stories. I love creativity. I love how a good story can pull you in, make you genuinely care about someone or something that, in reality, doesn't even exist. This, to me, exemplifies humanity, sets us apart: the power of our imagination.

The Lost season finale has brought back emotions that I've had a number of times in my life. The feeling of loss, satisfaction, heartbreak and exhilaration of leaving something you have truly loved. When a story holds you so tight for so long, it becomes a part of you, and when it finally lets go, it feels like that part of you is missing.

I'm remembering other stories that have given me this same feeling of loss and humility. As I think of these titles, they seem trite, unimportant and silly. But when their stories intersected with mine, they became a part of my own. Stories like Battlestar Galactica, the first time they found Earth. When Golem takes the Ring back from Frodo on Mt. Doom. When Jim finally tells Pam he loves her. When Han is frozen in carbonite. When Areis dies. When everyone bows to the Hobbits. Our defeat of Yogg-Saron. The Sopranos, Journey. Returning to Galaxies to find a statue dedicated to me. The Story of B.

The first time I played Elgar's Nimrod. The loss of my friendship with Jon. When my son was born and every day since. My first kiss with my wife.

I'm being melodramatic and obviously divulging too much, but it is cathartic. Processing.

The Lost finale went through a similar reflection of itself. The way it showed the best and worst times of the characters lives together on the island, when they finally touched their friends again and remembered their story. Maybe it was cathartic for those involved in Lost too. I guess as viewers, we all were.

I will miss Lost, as I have missed these other great stories, these friends I had the privilege of spending some time with. But I do feel oddly satisfied, as one does at this kind of parting. I look forward to discovering a new story, making a new friend, one that can hold you in only a way that the human imagination can.