Dear Lost Fans,

I think some folks are confused regarding how Lost ended, so I thought I’d write a short post explaining what happened.
Basically, the life they lived on the island was reality as we know it.  The parallel story line this past season of everyone living back in the states, is actually, per Lost, life after death for each of the characters.  It is a stage of heaven, where the participants are living out their dreams, but their dreams are still earthly bound.  Sawyer and Miles are now cops rather than criminals. Sun and Jin are together. Jack has a son.  So, on and so forth.  Syed has not forgiven himself so he still sees himself as not worthy.  But the two points that were being made during this parallel story, was that each of them was still trying to hold on to life as we know it and to fully experience heaven, they needed to let go.  And actually, at the end there the premise that in the after life that time is irrelevant is one that I also explored in my book too (and I’m sure so have others).  That what came before and what comes after aren’t subject to time as we know it.

And the experience on the island was really an opportunity for each cast member to “work out their salvation”.  Jacob brought them there because each of them was alone and he knew that the exeperince and hardship they experienced there would bind them with a love that would survive this current existence.  In the parallel story line, they are allowed to reconnect because of that love.  At the concert it was interesting that the mother, Mrs Whitmore asked that Desmon not take her child (playing the concert), because she too understood that none of them were in the final heaven, but Desmond replied that her son, like the lady cop who freed them from the police transport van, was not ready (nor it seems was the mother either for that matter). 

And while Kate, Sawyer and a few other survived their island experience, and Hurley and Linus lived out their days on the island, they all eventually reconnected in the next life, as they say they would.

So, does that help?

Alan Jones
To Wrestle with Darkness