I've been hugely tempted to go back and watch Lost again recently. I've seen the whole thing twice - once during its first broadcast, and one binge watch a few years back, but I'm steadily persuading myself to get into it again.
Not because all of that silly mystery box stuff - all that nonsense really doesn't matter once you've been given all the answers you are going to get - but because I'm a sucker for its blatant sentimentality in a world of sci-fi craziness, with a terrifically romantic cast jumping through all sorts of existential hoops, and - like Buffy - occasionally beating the tar out of each other.
Plus, I keep thinking about how Lost proved one thing above all else - the value of a decent backpack.
A lot of that story was spent walking all around that fucking island, and it really proved to me the value of a plastic bottle and a backpack.
The most basic things become the most important, when all else is stripped away from you. And you could be lost in literal oceans of time, and slogging through some strange esoteric history, but it's a lot easier to keep away from a metaphysical smoke monster with your hands free and your bottle in your bag.
It reminds me of other stories I've read, based on real events in far off countries, about how when all of society is collapsing around you, and you just need a lemon tree or something that produces food. You might get sick of lemon tea, but can use the excess lemons to trade for other goods to keep you alive and healthy.
And even though it's just a lemon tree, you have to protect it with your life, because it is your life, and you might not think you're capable of killing someone over a lemon tree, but if it's all you've got and the difference between your own survival or annihilation, all morals go out the window.
But it's that most basic thing - a single tree or a backpack on a desert island - that can keep you going, and keep you alive. Or at least make all that hiking for answers a little easier.
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