NOW

"There is only now." - - - Ernest Hemingway

Words have meaning. There is a certain precision in a few words.

Now means at the present time or moment; at the time directly following the present moment; immediately;  under the present circumstances; as a result of something that has recently happened; and as a consequence of a known fact.

In LOST, who was actually living in the Now?

The sideways world was a result of something "recently" happening: the plane crash.
It appears that the time directly after the plane began to tear a part solidified the sideways realm as at that moment, each passenger on the plane had their "lives flash before their eyes."

It could be argued then that the sideways world was the characters "true past." It was in that one moment that capsulized both their past and their hopes for the future into one cosmic present aboard Flight 815.

Some characters did not really change in the sideways world: Jack was still searching for his father; Kate was still a fugitive. But there were other critical changes. Hurley was not the lottery loser in the sideways world but a confident, but lonely businessman. Sawyer was a cop looking for a con man. And the secondary characters actually had prior connections before popping up on the island: such as Miles being Sawyer's partner, and Juliet being Jack's ex-wife.

For if the sideways world would have been the time line IF Flight 815 did not crash, then that is the true core of the main characters.

Such a viewpoint would drastically change the perception of the island world. We would now know why there was an immediate connection between Juliet and Jack when Jack was captured by the Others. In the past "real life," they were once married but now divorced.

And even secondary characters had prior island connections. Arzt and Ben were faculty members at school prior to Arzt being crashed on the island (so Ben's memory was in his time line, and transferred into the island world). Likewise, Alex and her mother, Rousseau, were in Arzt's memory as well. If mere memories were the building blocks for the island world, that puts the island realm into the universe of imagination, fantasy, dreams or supernatural thought transformation.

And the island transformation helps explain away some paradoxes. For example, why Aaron was born "twice," once on the island and once in the after life. We know that Claire was pregnant when she boarded Flight 815. We know that Claire was conflicted about giving her baby up for adoption. We know in the island time line, her "now" was giving birth on the island with Kate. In the sideways world, it was giving birth at the concert with Charlie.

But in Claire's "now" aboard Flight 815, Aaron was not born. In her future thoughts about her child, she could have imagined keeping the child (sideways) or losing the child (island/O6). But in both situations, Aaron is never born.

This sideways concept being the "true" one also helps understand why Ben did not leave with Hurley in the after life church. He still wanted to stay in the sideways "now" to remain close to Alex and Rousseau. If the island was the true past prior to Flight 815, then Ben would have stood zero chance of any happiness with Alex or Rousseau because his island character was brutal, cruel, evil and the cause of their deaths. So it can only make sense that Ben knew Alex and Rousseau prior to Flight 815, but his feelings or discussions with Arzt were transferred into the island world re-creation.

It makes the memories of characters like Arzt the foundation for people who were not on the plane but were on the island. Perhaps, Arzt's emotional state created a darker version of Ben for the island story (because Arzt also had feelings for Rousseau in his "real" life).

But then again, one could remark, the sideways being the true continuum of the characters pre-flight lives does not explain David, Juliet and Jack's child. But actually, it does. As a child of divorce, David may have resented both his parents. He could have blamed himself for having no normal family life. And that may be while David was in the sideways world, he was not in the church because he was living his own life in his "now," totally unrelated to both the sideways and island universes.

That would lead one to conclude that BOTH the sideways and island locations were not real. That the sideways world had its foundation the factual memories of the passengers aboard Flight 815 before it crashed. That the island world had its foundation on the emotional memories of the passengers as they died in the plane crash.

This explanation helps to unify both conflicting story lines and missing characters.

But it goes to show us how the concept of "now" itself during LOST's six seasons. We can agree that the original writer, Jeffrey Leiber, and ABC executives believed that his characters would survive a plane crash and continue their normal time lines. When Abrams and the first new writers were brought on the series, the writer's guide contemplated that the characters would be alive and struggling to survive on the island. But that "now" present changed with the supernatural jumps with time travel and immortal beings clouded in vague mysteries.  The show's focus left the present island time to create elaborate flashbacks and flash forwards to the state of illusion, fantasy and dreams.

It was clearly not the original intent of the origin of LOST to switch gears from a reality drama to a supernatural fantasy series, but it happened.  The means of shocking viewers with bizarre twists and violence became the standard operating procedure rather than keeping a cohesive story line together with mounting continuity errors. LOST would have been a much different, abet calmer, series if the original story vision kept marching forward in real time.