LEGACY SHOWS

Since LOST there have been many iconic and epic television shows that critics and fans stressed over.

Breaking Bad was a media darling based upon its premise, its script and its compelling actors.

Currently, the fantasy epic Game of Thrones is on everyone's radar. The coffee room talk is very high on this series as fans are eagerly anticipating the climatic ending.

But it is very hard for a show to keep itself on the rails when fan expectations are so far ahead of the ability of the writers and staff to meet those expectations.

There are the big, deep film franchises like Avengers: End Game which will set in the next few weeks a world wide box office record of more than $3 billion.

But there are iconic series, like Star Trek and Star Wars, who have had their spin-offs, sequels and prequels not being received as highly as the original shows. Some of that is viewer burn-out of the franchise's story. In some cases, the original show fan base has aged out and the material does not hook younger viewers. There are more diversions now for people to spend their entertainment time, such as video games, YouTube broadcasts and Twitch streams.

LOST is still considered a legacy show because it long running series that captured the imagination of both critics and fans to the point of obsession on every detail. Game of Thrones has many similar attributes as fans are trying to figure out who will survive to the End. And the End is the key to the legacy of a series.

For many, LOST's ending was weak to a fail. For others, it was the perfect happy ending for their favorite characters. Many thought the questions had to be answered about the mythology of the show. Others thought the final character development was more important. Insiders have tried to conceal many of the production issues which partially caused major shifts in scripts and settings which may or may not have caused the strange, disjointed final season to come together.

The debate of LOST's End is a continuation of the in-season debates about the motivations of the characters, who was good, who was evil, and what everything meant to mean in the Big Picture. This on-line fan community debates were just as important as the show itself.

The only problem with LOST's legacy is that it is frozen in time. People still remember it, but memories will fade over time. It is not in syndication because it is a series that builds upon each previous episode. It is not like a sit-com that has a self contained 30 minute story line resolution. As such, LOST does not have the continuing traction of Star Trek, which continues to be syndicated and shown on a daily basis across the cable spectrum. In that regard, LOST will never be as popular as Star Trek.  But it may be more important to future screenwriters on the pitfalls of expectations in creating a legacy show.

HAPPINESS

What is happiness? We know when we are happy, but what causes it?

Two studies recently reported in The Independent try to explain this simple but elusive concept.

Everyone wants to be happy and it’s long been the ultimate goal for humans. Now researchers at Kyoto University believe they have found the region in the brain that is responsible for controlling these feelings by looking at the neural structures that cause people to be happy.

The research has been led by Wataru Sato, who thinks he has found the answer as to what makes us happy, by using MRI to find out where in the brain happiness happens.

Their study revealed that, an overall feeling of happiness is caused by happy emotions and life satisfaction. When these two feelings happen at once in the precuneus, you become happy.

The precuneus is found in the medial parietal lobe of your brain (located at the top of your head, towards the back) which is involved in episodic memory, reflecting upon self and some aspects of consciousness.

Doctors are still unclear what the neural mechanism behind happiness occurring is though.

Participants had their brains scanned with MRI and then completed a survey. The survey involved describing how happy the participants were generally, how intensely they feel emotions, whether these are positive or negative feelings and how satisfied they are with their lives.

The results showed there was a positive relationship between the subjective happiness score and grey matter volume on the right precuneus. People who were more content with their lives, had a larger precuneus.

Analysis also indicated that the same area had an association with the combined positive and negative emotional intensity and life satisfaction.

The study also reveaed that people experience emotions in a variant of ways. Some people feel more happiness more intensely when they receive compliments, for example. Those people who feel happiness more intensely also feel sadness at a lower intensity as well.

Overall, the findings suggested that the precuneus is able to mediate overall happiness by integrating the emotional and cognitive components of happiness.

Mr Sato said: “Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is. I’m very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy. Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mas in the precuneus. This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research."

However, Generation Y is having their own issues with finding happiness.
This is the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. There is a sub-part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y called  "Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies," or GYPSYs.  A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

A typical  GYPSY is very pleased with themself.  Only issue is this one thing: they are generally unhappy.

Happiness comes down to a simple formula:

Happiness = Reality - Expectations

It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy.  When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they’re unhappy.

A GYPSY's parents raised them with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility.  And they weren’t alone.  Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.
This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents’ goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn’t really do it for them.  A GYPSY-worthy lawn has  more, like flowers.

The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security.  The fact is, a green lawn isn’t quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY.  Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.

The phrase “follow your passion” has gotten traction only in the last 20 years, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time.  The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase “a secure career” has gone out of style, just as the phrase “a fulfilling career” has gotten hot.

To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn’t think about as much.While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, GYPSYs been given a second message throughout her childhood as well: You're Special.
 
This message creates a major problem for GYPSYs: They Are Delusional
 
Gen Y has been taught “everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd.”  So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better.


So why is this delusional?  Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special: better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual. According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything. They have the self-perception of having a pre-determined destiny of greatness without doing much to achieve such status. As such, a harsh reality hits when they reach out into the real world.


A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market.  While their parents’ expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Gen Y considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as they are, and it is up to them and   a matter of time and choosing which way to go.  Gen Y's  pre-workforce expectations look something like this:

Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard.  Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s.

But GYPSYs aren’t about to just accept that. Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has “unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback,” and “an inflated view of oneself.”  He says that “a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting.”

For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?”  He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief.”

Gen Yers' extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one’s own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college.   Their reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving them “reality – expectations” happy score coming out at a negative.

And it gets even worse.  On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation: GYPSYs Are Taunted
 
Sure, some people from GYPSY’s parents’ high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did.  And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn’t really know what was going on in too many other peoples’ careers. On the other hand, Gen Yers areconstantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting. Social media creates a world for Gen Y where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation.  This leaves a typical Gen Y feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to their misery.

So that’s why Gen Y is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate.  In fact, they  probably started off their careers perfectly well, but to them, it feels very disappointing.

Experts' advice to this unhappy youth:

1) Stay wildly ambitious.  The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success.  The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere.

2) Stop thinking that you’re special.  The fact is, right now, you’re not special.  You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet.  You can become special by working really hard for a long time.

3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others.

EXPECTATIONS

I can't imagine I am the only woman over 50, not married or in a serious relationship, that has been told by some well meaning friend that It would be so good for me to find someone. Find someone? Is there a specific spot I should look? Is there a lost and found pile I can dig through to see if someone in there belongs to me? Perhaps there's a room full of eligible smart kind men in a building somewhere I can't locate. Of course I am kidding. I know people are well intentioned when they say it. But did they ever think that people who aren't in serious relationships can still be seriously happy? 

That while it may be lovely to be with someone it doesn't mean we can't be happy without someone? My happiness is based on me liking myself and loving the time I spend with my family and my friends. I've been in relationships that tore my very soul apart and left me desperately unhappy and marginalized. But, from the outside looking in I would have been seen to have it all. A handsome man and a ring on your finger is not the arbiter of a life or love fulfilled.

I have no problems with the truth on this matter. It will be nice if or when I meet the right, good man. But for now I am most happily living with exactly the right woman. Me.

--Arlene Dickinson

Society puts expectations on all of us. Especially on women on their role in our culture.

In fact, many people still judge another person by their status - - - whether it be social, wealth or relationship.

In Asian cultures, if a woman is not married by age 30, she is deemed a social outcast, an old maid, not worthy of total respect. In America, there was a strong Puritan ethic that women should marry early, raise children and tend a household. The American Dream was defined by a suburban house, picket fence, two cars in the garage and chicken in the stove pot. 

But times change but the perceptions remain the same.

In the 1970s, women were told by feminists that they could have a career as good as men; that they did not need men to validate their lives; that they could find their own path to happiness. Women were no longer defined by the men around them.

Even so, there were expectations that women were to settle down, marry and have a "normal" life.

With the advent of no fault divorces (where the promise "until death do we part" has been nullified), more and more women find themselves at mid-life, alone and in the cross hairs of family and friend advice that happiness is sharing your life with someone new.

Some women are too hurt by their past experiences to try it again. Past pain does not equate to future unhappiness, but human minds do tend to lessen emotional risks with mental excuses and procrastination themes. Some women try too hard to find a new partner, only to change their personality to something they are not - - - and hurting both themselves and their new relationship in the process of unwinding the white lies.

In LOST, many of the women were defined in this cultural stigma. 

Juliet was a medical doctor. But she was defined by her brilliant doctor husband. She was always in his shadow. Her accomplishments were secondary to his work. He cheated on her, disrespected her and then discarded her. But her upbringing and personality keep that bond with him even after they broke up. They were never compatible because he lacked the mutual trust and respect for her.

Kate was the rural farm girl. She had the spunk and fire of a tom boy. She was adventurous and fun. But at the point where she was supposed to grow up and become a responsible woman (settle down, marry, get a stable job, raise a family, etc.) she rebelled and lashed out at her own family. She valued her freedom more than her own happiness. It made her a bitter, lonely, frightened and sad young woman with no goals, desires or dreams.

Sun was the opposite. She was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She grew up in the power and position of a wealthy family. She had no hardships growing up. She became bored with the life of a rich princess. She hated the fact that her parents had their own path for her life (including marrying a proper man). Like Kate, she rebelled against her parents to marry Jin, a lowly, poor, uneducated fisherman's son. To her own shock, Jin did not take to her own adventurous side - - - he quickly changed to become Sun's father's "yes man," because Jin wanted what Sun already abandoned: wealth and status. 

People have to decide their own paths. Yes, there are speed bumps along the journey of life. Some of those are created by luck, society's pressures, cultural perceptions and one's own mistaken choices. But in the end, every person must make their own decisions that are best for them and them alone. Only then can that person who is comfortable with their own life, open up to share the "real" them with another person.