HAPPINESS

"A day without laughter is a day wasted.” - - - Charlie Chaplin

A happy day is a day filled with smiles. Laughter is an upbeat response to the stimulus around you. In many respects, laughter is a "misconnection" in your brain trying to connect two opposite factors which cause an instinctive release of laughter. Most jokes have an odd ending twist that triggers an emotional response.

One has to exercise their mind on a daily basis. It means to gather information, process it, store it, and use it in order to meet your own expectations, goals and work. But it also needs to relax and reboot itself otherwise the stress of daily life will create negative thoughts to take root, such as fear.

And once negative thoughts take center stage, it can lead to a regression introspection of anxiety.

Like fear, the past and the future are products of your mind. No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Happy people know this, so they focus on living in the present moment. It’s impossible to reach your full potential if you’re constantly somewhere else, unable to fully embrace the reality (good or bad) of the very moment.

To live in the moment, you must do two things:

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and it will create your future. Happy people know that the only good reason to look at the past is to see how far you’ve come.

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future, and don’t place unnecessary expectations upon yourself. Worry has no place in the here and now.

As Mark Twain once said,

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

It is very difficult to control one's emotional state. We can train ourselves to react in certain situations. But there are moments where a hard wired response (a survival mode) will kick in and overwhelm the individual. We can’t control our emotional responses, and we can’t control all of our circumstances, but we can rid ourselves of habits that serve no purpose other than to make us miserable.

Everyone knows what makes them happy. With that in mind, everyone should set off a simple plan to achieve those things that make you happy. For example, if you are lonely list a few things or places where you can meet new people who share your ideas, hobbies or likes. Then go out and try to take baby steps to find new sources of happiness. If you don't try, you cannot succeed. If you don't try, you cannot change your situation. Happiness is something that is not given to you. You must go out and find it.

HEADING DOWN THE ROAD

As October creeps toward Halloween, with scores of creepy clowns popping up along the roadsides of America, the season gets us back to one element of LOST - - - dream theories.

But in this holiday season, nightmares.

One can broadly classify dreamers into two categories:

1. The upbeat, positive daydreamer who fantasizes about a better life for him or her self.

2. The depressed, anxiety ridden, negative sleeper who tosses and turns at night with ghastly visions of danger and horror.

Many scientists believe that dreams during sleep have major conscious contributions to a person's life. They believe that dreams are the mind's computer running simulations of potential events to gauge how the person (sleeper) will react if the simulation comes true. This is part of a probable ancient self-protection mechanism to teach instinct and survival skills.

The human mind is a complex thing which probably has hard wired in itself self-preservation.

So, one could presume that people who have happy dreams are living happy waking lives.

The counter part to that presumption is that people who have nightmares are living unhappy lives.

There is probably a gray area of people who lead mixed waking lives (people who are caught in a rut, dream of better things, or at times fear the worst.)

When you look at the scope of LOST's story lines, most center upon what would consider a negative path. The drama that incorporates danger, death and violence is easier to comprehend and compel viewership.

Each of the main characters on the show had deep seeded concerns about their lives. There were more negative emotions driving character actions than happy-go-lucky personalities.

Many characters had deep, unresolved emotional issues such as abandonment, abuse, social anxiety disorders and irrational fears. Many characters were heading down the road to nervous breakdowns, anti-social behavior or addiction/retreat from society.

So it is no wonder that these characters "wound up" together in the same place.

The place (and what it represents) is a matter for another discussion. But the series may have been an attempt to work through the characters underlying secrets, unresolved conflicts and personal angsts in the form of living island nightmares (real and imagined).

MAN OR MACHINE

In 1973, a movie called Westworld captured the sci-fi world with its realistic but imaginative look at an artificial intelligence based theme resort. The concept has rebooted itself in an HBO series.

In the original movie, guests could chose to live out their sexual pleasures in either a Wild West town (filled with brothels, prostitutes, drunks and gunslingers) or at a Roman orgy (with its own backstabbing senators, harlots and slaves).

The sci-fi foundation for the movie (adapted from Michael Crichton’s popular book) was that advanced robotics would come to recreate the human body to almost flawless perfection. The skin, eyes, pores, hair and features would look and feel real. The artificial brain would be almost as fast as a human brain. The last leap would be whether the androids would find a consciousness in their programs.

The drama unfolds when the robots malfunction. The gunslinger goes on a killing rampage when its "do not harm guests" governor malfunctions.

It is a classic trope of machines taking their program intelligence into conscious rage against their human creators.

This does go back to one theory of LOST. A few viewers believed that the island itself was a Westworld-type creation. It contained human robots interacting with "guests" in an adventure theme park setting. The theme was a cross between Survivor and Robinson Caruso. Two teams, the 815ers and the Others, battled to control the island. Each team was filled with robots to churn the game activity.

One example was Patchy, the Other who apparently died several times during the series. Yet, he continued to pop up to turn a story line gruesome. He was like the gunslinger in Westworld who continually got gunned down by a guest, only to return after repairs.

There is no clear distinction between who were the "guests" and who were the android game players. One could assume flight attendant Cindy was an android as an Other she mixed with both groups. One could think Jacob was also robotic. Even though his body was burned to cinders, he appeared again to the 815ers in human form to guide them on their island decisions. Even Desmond, who was jolted in the EM machine, and had program glitches (his visions) could be considered an android prop in the storylines. Even Locke would be considered a hapless robot since his form was found dead in the Ajira hold at the same time he was walking the island (with new character program of Flocke).

If you put LOST into the context of a Westworld sci-fi world, it does add some unique "what ifs" in the mythology of the series.