THE JOURNEY

Always concentrate on how far you have come, rather than how far you have left to go. The difference in how easy it seems will amaze you. — Heidi Johnson

There is saying that "the journey is more important than the end."

It depends on one's perspective and mission of the journey. For example, if a person's goal is to graduate from college in four years, the journey and its experiences would be important educational and social events in that person's life. But the goal was always getting the diploma, which in itself would open new doors, i.e. employment or career paths.

Life experiences can be broken down into segments and lessons learned for each individual. A young child who liked to play with tinker toys and build objects may take that interest and grow it into an engineering career. Even outside the academic arena, a kid who likes to play soccer may train hard and develop his skills to become a world class player. Both in both cases, the individual may nurture a skill or interest towards his final goal.

Goals are important. It is how we measure our expectations against our accomplishments.

In the arts, a good story should have a beginning, middle, climax and conclusion. And during the chapters, the storyteller needs to weave interesting events, trials, tribulations, character flaws and choices in which to make the main character(s) grow or change to meet their goals.

In the LOST series, it was never that clear road map to the end. 

If we reverse engineer the standard storytelling method, does it give us any new insight?

The creators stressed that the LOST saga was more about the characters than the actual events. People related more to the characters than with the surroundings. It is said the characters made the show and not the character's activities within the show. In one respect, fans did gravitate towards certain characters. However, the rationale is like taking a hydrogen molecule out of H2O and still call it water.

So, if we fast forward to the series conclusion, what did our main characters "achieve" in the end?

They were reunited after they all died.

Then, all the series events ("the journey") were constructed so that the main characters could achieve their individual goal ("an after life") with the people who they met on their journey.

If this is true, then the majority of viewers would be disappointed in the show because the premise was truly about lost souls navigating through purgatory. (I was always in the minority in the community blogs in regard to the after life premise to the series.)

But even if one assumes that the main characters were "alive" during their island existence, it would still have been a pre-purgatory test if the final goal was to have peace of mind and go forward in the sideways church into the white light. 

So how did the island adventures "help" the main characters in getting to achieve their goal of a happy, heavenly after life? There was lots of excitement, lots of missions, lots of lying, lots of killing, lots of dying, lots of puzzling inconsistencies, lots of unsolved mysteries - - - there was a lot of disjointed stuff going on. But in the context of the main character group, there were no harsh personal judgments of themselves or their fellow survivors as being good or evil. The characters did not redeem themselves from their personal demons. In fact, it is almost universal that none of the characters changed their personalities or overcame their fears. For example, Hurley was an overweight, shy, quiet and responsible person before Flight 815. At the island end, Hurley was an overweight, shy, quiet and responsible guardian. The only difference was that he had more people he could call "his friend."

It would seem that the whole journey was one of creating friendships. Some friendships were forged by similar interests (like music with Hurley and Charlie), some made through lust, some through fighting and mutual respect, and some just by the shared experience of survival.

When Christian told Jack that his friends were waiting for him, it meant that their collective journey was the most important thing in their lives. In turn, that meant that all of them had pretty crappy real lives. And it is still bothersome that the main reason Jack had a bad life was his father, but his father was the master of ceremonies in the sideways church. It was also bothersome that no one else in the church had a parent or sibling for the after life graduation except for Jack. Didn't Shannon have a very close relationship with her father?  Sayid was close with his older brother, too. And the fact that Rose and Bernard left the group to be off on their own should have logically eliminated them from the final church scene. The same reasoning would apply to Desmond and Penny. It also meant that all the people who left the island on Ajira plane never found any close friends or family once they returned home.

The conclusion in the sideways church did impart final closure to the series, but at a large cost to the overall story lines.

If the final scene was developed at the beginning of the series, it left gaping holes in many of the character's lives. Just as important as who was in the church, who was not present. Why was Locke's love of his life, Helen, not there for him? Why did Boone sit alone? Why was Aaron present as a baby (does that mean he never grew up?) And why was Ji Yeon not there for Jin and Sun (was she a prop like Jack's son David?) And why was Penny and Dez's son Charlie not in the church?

If one could only move on to heaven in a group, then why was it limited to just the 20 people in the church? Christian had no real connection to 17 of 20 people present.

Was 20 the final magic Number? Was that the amount of souls needed to complete the reservation to the next after life rebirth?  Or, had Christian already "move on" (since he seemed to know what was coming next) so he was the other 19 souls' guardian angel?

If you look to see number connections, if 19 is the key number to move on, is it supported by the candidates strong bonds with other candidates to reach a critical spiritual mass to move on?
Hurley plus Sawyer gets us to 19. Jack minus Hurley equals 19. Jin minus Jack equals 19. None of these formulations leads to an answer.

This may be the greatest unanswered series questions: why were just these characters allowed to move on in the end? What did they do to deserve or qualify them to move on? And why did this group have to reconvene in order to move on?

The journey itself is not answer but the silent proposition left by the writers.