Joelle Lifestyle - The World at Home

“All we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us.”

Penelope- Lost

A few months ago my nephew recommended I watch a show on TV called Lost.  I have never really been a TV person, especially series  They make me feel like I am a hostage to a weekly date, like I will have to give up and miss  for another seven long days  My personality constantly leads me to the illusion that I am in full control of my time and my life.

Last month, while casually changing the channels with my remote control, I noticed the face of a short Middle-Eastern man on the screen, quite attractive I must say, with brown, very expressive eyes and a dark beard.  He was on his knees, even more attractive, at a Mosque in Iraq reciting the famous words from the Qur’an , “Allahuh Akbar”

Another young man sees him from afar and a whole suspense is created when the two finally meet, apparently after a long time, and one tells the other his newly wedded wife has been killed in an attack. After a few minutes of watching, my glass of hot tea was still in my hands without even having had the first sip taken, so much was my attention drawn by the scene.  I read the header at the bottom: “Lost – Season 1″.  What?  Is this the one my nephew suggested? Why didn’t he tell me it was about international affairs?

I decided to watch the whole episode, and after that I immediately called my nephew.  As I recall, he told me he had watched an entire season in one 24 hour period.That’s what I needed…the whole series all at one time.  My time.

My nephew agreed to negotiate the extremely valuable information in exchange of a few traded I-Tunes files against the link of a website called Hulu Videos. I made time my commodity and blessed my sister for the gift of such a useful nephew.

Here I am for a whole month – every single evening before going to bed, no matter the time or schedule – connected to my Hulu, negotiating only with myself a minimum of one to three episodes at a time. In this way my total bliss of 305 episodes, divided into four seasons, will be able to last for a calculated while.  The decision to change that will be mine alone.

This American series follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, after a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, United States falls from the sky somewhere in the South Pacific.  Each episode typically features a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character’s life.

Created by Damon Lindelof, J. J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber, it is filmed primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii. The pilot episode was first broadcast on September 22, 2004.  Produced by ABC Studios, Bad Robot Productions and Grass Skirt Productions, it airs on the ABC Network in the United States.

Lost is basically about fate, faith and free choice, the possibility of hope, human redemption and the influence of time over one’s destiny.  These almost irresistibly handsome characters most of the time shoot in (primo piano), each and every one having complicated issues from the past to deal with.These issues, fortunately or not – it’s up to us to decide – interfere with their daily struggle to survive on the island, but only to a certain extent.

This extent is up to the characters when it comes to making choices as totally new individuals, interacting with other survivors, all connected to a close degree of separation, in emerging new situations.Choosing to act or not, based on who they are or were, will make an important difference in their lives because in that forced new scenario, nobody will be in a position to prove any of their past realities..  On the island, exploring the present and its condition of uncertainty is all that counts.

Suppose you are given the same traumatic experience without having made that your choice; How would you react?  How many times have you been thrown into situations by the forces of the universe where at first, being unfamiliar, you felt completely abandoned and deserted?  Then, as time goes by, you realize you don’t really mind them at all. In fact, you might even realize that – miraculously – you can’t imagine living without them.

Until for some reason you choose, consciously or unconsciously, to lose them again.Which point of reference will you adopt?The old one, or the new? The x-factor leads us to think about our dependence in relation to the values and attachment we give to time.

On the island, what really matters is how you behave in your surroundings at the present moment.The island gives you a chance, as if you were trapped in a bubble of time in a limited space surrounded by nature  Having no connection with the outside world other than your past memories and losses, you are given the opportunity to be constantly challenged in order to come out from within your self-built protective emotional comfort zone.

It involves issues of manifestation of true identity versus learned behavioral patterns that, in most of the present situations, don’t make as much of a difference as they did in the past.With that I mean that what you have learned from your past experiences will not necessarily be validated at the present moment. The “Monster” each and every one of the characters carries within is – on the island – a common denominator to all, personified by a noisy, lethal black smoke.

Critically acclaimed and a popular success, Lost garnered an average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC during its first year. It has won numerous industry awards including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe for Best Drama in 2006 and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Dealing with my daily life for more than a month, and looking forward to my evening Lost ‘dates’, I would sometimes stop and reflect on the possibility of resetting my life every 108 minutes to the starting point where I left it, like at the hatch of the Dharma Initiative station. During and after episodes, or in between Bad Robot commercials, I would find myself writing in a notebook my observations regarding the whispers, symbols of the characters leading consciousness, the Dharma Initiative experiments based on the human condition attempting to make the world a better place, and the concept of traveling through time.

My life became a theater of such analogies and a movie of my own relationships, the main aspect being the character’s personalities.Among them, Jack: the perfect example character, the doctor, the leader against his will, the one who believes in what he sees and not beyond, the man every mother wishes for her daughter to marry, the one who keeps you safe. Jack will not only take care of you but, like Moses in the Bible, he’ll lead your way out of the slavery of the not-so-deserted island.

But sometimes in life, you are not necessarily drawn to what is safe for you.  You need adventure, freedom, vibe, risk. You are born to be wild, to be a rebel, to contest what others call law, to make your own judgment and not necessarily follow every order.

You need to explore, to search, to defy destiny.  You need to experience your own truth.  Lost will provide you with the perfect characters: Sawyer and Kate.

The great thing about the series is that in my case, I would end up going to the fridge for a light chocolate pudding wearing loose pajamas, to release the stress between this personal conflicting duality that struck me throughout my life.

Would I choose to live out on the dangerous windy shore, and be the exposed target of unknown forces like the “Others” with Sawyer, reading books, sleeping half awake with a greater chance to be found by another boat and get back to my old life, which did not necessarily mean anything to me…

…or stay with Jack in a safer place near the sheltered caves, where there is plenty of water and shade, in the protected forest, with a new code of socially proactive responsibilities, but less certain of being discovered and rescued?

And like the dude Hurley Heyes, with a little self doubt, I am enjoying my chocolate pudding…. It’s 10 o’clock in New York City. I have just received an email from a friend in Washington about the general theory of time travel.

While reading it I realize, like a wise mystical warrior such as John Lock. that my time is now.  And like my sexy and funny heroes Charley Pace and Desmond Hume would…

… I decide to pick my choice in due time.

This post is dedicated to Dr. Patrick Bar Avi

Joelle’s Picks:

The TV Series: Lost - In May 2007, it was announced that Lost would continue for its fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons, concluding with the 117th produced episode in May 2010. These three final seasons were planned to consist of 16 episodes each, running weekly in the spring uninterrupted by repeats.The fifth season premiered on Wednesday, January 23.

Photography Credits: Courtesy ABC Network Studios all rights reserved

Some concepts about Time Travel:

1. There may be many different time-lines in the future
2. The relevant time-line we live in is affected by our actions.
3. When you go back in time, you look the same as you do in the present, you do not age until you catch up with your current age
4. You can never time travel into the future as events haven’ t  happened yet.

There are 2 theories about time traveling:

• You can change the time-line by changing relevant things

• There nothing that you can do to change major events

The time on the island is in a stand-still because it is being reset every 108 minutes, like sending someone back in time 2 hours, and as soon as the 2 hours pass you send him back again (closed loop).

My favorite theory: Lost: Theory on Time Travel:

The Facebook Group of fans: Lost Time Loop Theory club of fans

The Book: Time Travel Wife