Byrd's Chicks

Get Lost

A Royal Romp with Queen Lolo

January 29, 2009

I’m not a big TV viewer. But years ago, my kids twisted my arm, pinned me to the bed, and made me watch an episode of LOST.

During the opening sequence, I was distracted and resistant. Five minutes into the episode, I was totally confused. By the first commercial break, I was hopelessly lost. And by the end, I was hooked.

From then on, every Wednesday night was “LOST” night at my house. 9:00 p.m. meant two bowls of popcorn, my two daughters and my two dogs, piled onto my king-sized bed with me and a heaping serving of shared pillows.

No guests were allowed on LOST night. Computers off. No instant messaging. No texting either. It was a closed and sacred circle of three. (Heaven help the unwitting soul who dared to phone when LOST was on. Not that we'd answer... but whichever one of us listened to the voicemail message later would surely announce the name of said caller with an expression usually reserved for names of environmental polluters or serial killers.)

And now, here we are once again, into a new season of the wild, mysterious, cosmic, and confusing adventures of the survivors of the crash of Oceanic flight 815. If you’re a fan, you know how much fun we’re already having, two episodes in and more confused than ever before.

If you haven't ever watched the show, it's probably too late for you to get onboard.

But maybe not.

You see, a few years ago, Tricycle Magazine ran an article called "Let's Get Lost; Television to Meditate On." In it, Buddhist teacher, Dean Sluyter wrote, "LOST'S deepest dharmic resonance is probably the experience of lostness itself. Ironically, as the characters struggle to get UN-lost, viewers tune in to GET lost - not only to hang out vicariously on a lush uncharted island.... but to get good and disoriented by the ever-twisting, ever-widening plot."

Indeed, this sense of “lostness” seems to be part the attraction to LOST. Just when you think you know what's going on... You don't. In fact, there are only two statements ever made at my house while the show is on: The first, always uttered by my teenager (and usually TO me), is "Stop asking questions, you're SUPPOSED to be confused!" The second is, "Shhhhhh!"

If you've missed the previous seasons, you can catch up a bit by watching the re-cap shows online and then asking a lot of questions if you can even think of what to ask..Or just relax and give yourself over to the sensation of complete disorientation on Wednesday nights from 9 – 10 p.m.

If nothing else, you might get so lost, you'll tip over into enlightenment.

In fact, that's what Tricycle writer Dean Sluyter cleverly suggests the show is about.

"To be lost is to be stripped of the cozy but confining assurance that you're on course, on a tidy, logical trajectory from Point A to Point B.," he says. "If you're really going somewhere new (toward enlightenment, let's say), any concept you have of the destination or the path when you set forth from your point of departure (ignorance) is necessarily an ignorant concept. So, with any practice that's going to really help you get there (meditating, chanting, studying sutras, relating to a teacher, and so forth) somewhere in the middle of the process you must get lost to your concepts, disoriented, discombobulated."

It's nice to be reminded that my often distractible, diffused way of thinking (which frequently feels like a liability) may actually be a desired state of mind.... at least for an hour on Wed. nights.

Sluyter wrote, "In fact, to do ANYTHING right, to do it so that it becomes a means of awakening, whether it's writing your novel or playing your saxophone, or falling in love (why do you think they call it "falling?"), you must become so hopelessly lost that wherever you come out is somewhere you could not have conceived of when you went in."

Posted by chicks at January 30, 2009 12:06 AM