In Search of Lost Time

I don’t consider myself to have an addictive personality. Jodi does; she can’t say no to chocolate if it’s in front of her (it should be humanly impossible to eat so many peanut butter M&Ms in one sitting), and, although she doesn’t drink often, her philosophy when she does is usually “the more the merrier.” I don’t have that problem. But I do get hopelessly addicted to one thing: television.

Not normal TV; oh, no, I would be a good candidate for a “Kill Your TV” bumper sticker. I’ve never had cable. TiVo remotes stymie me, make me feel like a member of my grandparents’ generation, as do video games. But just don’t make me kill my computer. Where would I be without the sweet oblivion of series on DVD, or, most recently, Lost in high-def on ABC.com? I wrote about The West Wing once on this blog, about how its characters were my best friends to speak of. Now, since there’s nobody on Lost you would really want to be best friends with, they’re skipping the middleman and heading straight toward my subconscious: they have started infiltrating my dreams. I have noticed that my dreams these days usually involve either my students or Lost characters. Thankfully not both yet. But which is better, really—waking up feeling like you’ve just been at work all day when it’s time for work (no offense, kids)? Or banding together with imaginary people attempting to thwart evil (in monsters, but most potently the evil that lurks in the depths of human consciousness) at every turn? And who is evil anyway? I mean, the other night I was best friends with Ana Lucia, even though she is like, so last season, but…well, I think I can answer my own question. It’s probably never better to be on the level where you’re relating to fictional characters as though they were real. I should be grateful to dream about work.

So why the addiction? Why can’t I stop? It’s not even that good, really—after three seasons of suspense the pattern is blatantly clear—not that I know who’s who and what’s going to happen, but that I KNOW that just when they seem like they’re going to answer some crucial question, some spanner will be thrown in the works and you’ll be forced to wonder who’s really on which side and rescue will be postponed yet again. It’s getting comical. Not to mention you know that whenever something huge happens, no one on the show is going to tell anyone about it; they’re going to speak in veiled, vague one-liners that ensure that their fellows learn as little about it as possible to pave the way for future misunderstandings—if you ask me, an abuse of dramatic irony. And furthermore, whenever they have to make some huge plan that involves the whole group, it’s going to be as convoluted as possible to ensure the most chance of something going horribly awry.

So this begs the question: Katherine, you KNOW all this. You are SMARTER than the show. It’s basically trash—suspenseful trash, decent non-linear-narrative-trash, but manipulative and fluffy—still mostly trash. So why do you let it control you? It’s like I always tell the kids about when I was in high school and college and I KNEW I was smarter than all the people who were cool, and basically just as pretty as all the people who were skinny and perfect, but just couldn’t believe it in my heart. Why would I still want to be like that when I knew it was better to be me? Maybe the real addiction is to the path of least resistance. It is so easy to believe in all those ridiculous norms and stereotypes, but to resist them with all your heart and soul requires real work. And it’s so much easier to immerse yourself in the stories of others (not just “The Others”) than to immerse yourself in your own.

That’s what’s sobering. I have probably spent about 48 hours watching Lost over the past month. And to think about what else I could have done with 48 hours of my free time; indeed, of my LIFE…well, it’s enough to make me feel like a slight waste of space. What if I had written for 48 hours, rather than not written at all? What if I had exercised, or meditated, written an actual letter to a friend with a stamp and with the beautifully tragic variations of handwriting that make us all human? I could have cleaned the house, planted a garden, learned the tarot, or even just THOUGHT—pondered life’s persistent questions. I could have responded to emails and phone calls, made pieces of art for friends, remembered birthdays, paid more attention to Jodi, planned better lessons, read BOOKS, for God’s sake, decided whether I actually BELIEVE in God…the list goes on.

The one thing I have been reading is a book by the Dalai Lama, called Ethics for the New Millennium—it started out as something I was skimming in order to make the students read something about Buddhism, but I got hooked and read the whole thing. It’s rather ironic that this is the book I’ve been reading during the aforementioned paralysis of inaction and spiritual decrepitude. It’s about how to implement a universal “spiritual revolution” through the simple ethical principle of compassion for others—and how much happier we will be personally, and how much improved society will be the world over if our every action is infused with the intention to not cause suffering to others or obstruct their right to happiness in any way. And I have thought quite a bit about my Lost addiction in relation to the ideas he puts forth. It’s certainly not directly hurting anybody for me to squander my life in front of the computer, so in that sense I guess it’s better than murdering innocents or deceiving people for my own gain. But I think I know what the Dalai Lama would say about my ethics, although at times I don’t want to believe it: that given what good I COULD be doing, both for others and in furthering my own spiritual quest (which would eventually result in further service to others), wasting even a little of my precious life in the pursuit of passivity is unconscionable. I am giving in to the demons of laziness, giving in to my own inertia, when what I need to exert is positive force.

I know that much of what I crave in Lost is being told a story. And I know the Dalai Lama himself would admit that the thirsting for stories is, in itself, a noble and essential human quality. I love saying to someone, “Tell me a story,” and hearing the infinite variety of results that come from this request. The whole value of reading, of writing, of being an English major (I have to believe that was a purposeful pursuit, or what is my life??) is in learning more about the world and humanity through our stories. But I’ve realized that the tipping point is when I let my craving of being TOLD a story prevent me from telling my own—when I let others’ journeys (FICTIONAL ones) distract me from bringing meaning to my own life, from contemplating more essential questions, from being of use.

I know all this. But just as it’s well-nigh impossible (in America in the new millennium) to believe you are beautiful at the age of 16 (a notion the Dalai Lama finds, rightfully, bewildering), it is ridiculously difficult to resist the inertia; to choose action and thought over laziness and passivity. I’m going to try. But it’s lucky that within two more episodes, I will have caught up to the current season of Lost and have to wait a whole week, like everybody else, to squander my life for a single hour. I guess piecemeal is better than all at once when it comes to wasting time…right?