Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?

Is it just me?  Am I the only one who’s still in a state of disbelief over what the writers had Sun do?

Maybe it’s the pregnancy.

Normally, I don’t get too wrapped up in the motivations of television characters (unless they appeared on The Wire — oh, Randy, I still mourn for you).  I mean, I love my stories and all, especially in the past few days when I find myself in downward facing dog staring in horror at the lumpen scary looking things that are supposed to be my ankles.  I’m told the best thing to do to coax them back to something approaching normal is to lie on my left side and relax.  And TiVo is the perfect companion for doing so.

So there I was, lying on my side last night, watching LOST in practically real time.  This alone was quite a treat, as I’m generally reduced to closing the blinds and guiltily watching in the middle of a weekday afternoon when the other members of the household, who do not appreciate LOST’s finer points, are not at home.  From the banging and yelling drifting my way from upstairs, it became apparent that Jake was not settling down to sleep on time and that I might actually steal a whole hour while Mike was upstairs with him.  Normally this would concern me no end … Do I let Jake sleep late to make up for the late bedtime and risk having him get into the habit of not going to bed until 10:30 every night?  Do I wake him up at his usual time and rightly blame myself for the increased intensity of ensuing toddler tantrums?

Last night I simply blissfully thanked him for choosing Daddy to do the bedtime honors, lay on my left side, and watched my story.

It was just before I heard Jake at the top of the stairs yelling, “Downstairs! Downstairs!” that, for the first time, I bothered to be bothered by a LOST plot twist.  So read on only if you saw last night’s episode or don’t care or don’t watch (in which case I still think there might be something ahead you might find worth reading, but that’s your decision to make).

Mothers Just Aren’t that Romantic, Are They?

So there we were, forty-five minutes in, my son preparing to interrupt my intense watching experience, and Ben hands Sun Jin’s wedding ring.  [Translation for those who don't watch the show:  Bad guy who claims to really be a good guy this season because he is bringing the people who managed to escape the Island back to the Island away from their showers and clean clothes and normal-but-supposedly-worse-lives in order to save the lives of the people they left behind on the Island hands one of these escapees who thought she saw her husband killed in a freighter explosion as she rode a helicopter to safety in last season's finale the wedding ring of said presumed dead husband who, it turns out in this episode, somehow survived the freighter explosion "in water" (his English is broken but pretty damned good for someone who spent a total of, I think, forty-some days with a bunch of people who do not speak Korean) and who, when he found out that one of the people left on the Island was going back to retrieve the ones who escaped, told the guy to use his wedding ring to convince his wife that he really is dead.  Only bad guy who says he's really good guy instead uses the ring to prove that Jin is alive to get Sun to come back to the Island.]

In a not unpredictable, overly romantic television moment, Sun takes the ring with a mixture of wonder and dismay.  “How could you let me think he was dead?” she says, tears springing to her eyes.

And then, of course, she agrees to go back to the Island.  Just like that.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the stuff about showers and the really, really nice hotel room in L.A. she was staying in.  Let’s forget her perfect hair cut and nutritious diet and high heels.  (Is she going back in that outfit?  At least the first time she was dressed for a long plane ride and therefore in something more comfortable than her high fashion suit.)

And, while we’re at it, if we’re the writers, let’s forget her three-year-old daughter.  You know.  The one who adorably cooed, “I miss you Mommy” or something like it on a cell phone from Seoul.  The one with whom she was pregnant when she left the Island [and, non-LOST-watchers, the reason she had to leave the Island because, for some mysterious reason, any woman who gets pregnant on the Island dies.  At least, she did last season.  Haven't heard much about it lately.]

“Oh, come on,” I muttered.  Or thought I muttered.  Or should have muttered.

Or am I wrong?  Am I the only mother who would never, ever, ever abandon my toddler for my husband?  Especially if I thought he was dead all along anyhow?

I saw it coming when she said good-bye to her daughter on the cell phone.  ‘I’ll be home soon, honey,” she said.  Since I don’t believe we’ve actually ever seen her in the same frame as her daughter, I don’t think I was having any revelation other viewers weren’t when I thought, “Oh, no you won’t.”

But, unlike a lot of other viewers, I’m a mom.  And unlike a whole lot — most — other viewers, I’m pregnant.  And unlike probably almost every viewer watching last night, I had my two-year-old jumping onto the couch and cuddling up against me just as this otherwise likable character completely forgot about her child and agreed to go back to an Island that no one can find and that she’ll probably never leave again.

Romantic, yes.  But, again, I ask.  Would any mother abandon her child for her partner?

Love and Non-Attachment

I’ll admit I feel profoundly uncomfortable saying I would leave Mike LOST on an Island somewhere rather than risk orphaning Jake.  Even if it’s the obvious solution, there is something wrong about saying you would abandon someone you love.  Someone you promised to love for the rest of your life.  Someone whose life is intimately bound up in yours.

Sure, Mike can take care of himself a whole lot better than Jake can.  Mike, after all, was not orphaned at the age of three.  He is nearly forty years old and therefore probably well past the point where my abandonment would have any grave psychological effects.  In fact, he managed to make it through thirty-three years without me in his life, and could probably do it again if he really had to.

And yet, I hate the very idea of leaving him on that Island, even if I never really will have to.  It seems like a betrayal to say I would, even for the sake of my child.

But I would.

And the best explanation I can give for why it would be the right thing to do has something to do with the concept of non-attachment.  I believe it derives from one of the yamas — the “disciplines” or “restraints” of a full yoga practice.  The yama brahmacarya is described by T.K.V. Desikachar as “a movement toward one essential truth.”  In other words, don’t get attached to things; let all your relationships foster your search for the essential truth.

Sure, one could make the argument that my life partner does just that.  He is constantly teaching me about unconditional love, reminding me to be more loving and kind toward myself, and letting me be a human being and yet still lovable.  But the one essential truth comes from inside, and not from anyone else.  So, in a sense, the relationships we form in our lives are rich, beautiful, fulfilling distractions.

I thought about this a lot when I was pregnant with Jake.  Pregnancy sure enough interferes with your asana practice.  It also, I understood, guarantees you will get very, very, very attached to the person in your uterus.  Just as you will get very, very, very attached to a child you adopt or a child your partner carries.  Parenthood is about this perverse desire to forget about what you need and give this small, helpless, increasingly independent and in adolescence sometimes downright mean person everything he or she needs, even if it means giving up something yourself.

Like, say, the husband you thought died in a freighter explosion three years ago.

The point, I guess, is that in most of our relationships, we are aware in some part of ourselves of the fragility of the connection.  Of how the relationship may nourish us and make our lives better but how it can not substitute for the things we must do for ourselves.  That no matter how much someone else loves us, we really do have to love ourselves, take care of ourselves, follow our own truth.

And the challenge of being a parent is how to do this while still being a parent.  Because, when it comes down to it, I know there’s not a single person reading this who would make the same choice Sun did.

Practicing Non-Attachment — In Your Life

As always, the precepts of yoga are most easily understood when you translate them to an asana practice.  It’s all about not being attached to the outcome in a particular pose.  Did a handstand yesterday?  Yippee.  Don’t be so sure you will do it again today.  If your body isn’t up to it, you will end up disappointed with yourself for no reason.  If you are able to do it, you may find yourself so carried away by ego that you will lose the benefits of the practice.

So, since you can practice non-attachment in every single yoga pose in every single asana practice, I invite you to try a greater challenge today:  practice it in your life.  Focus on one outcome to which, perhaps unconsciously, you have attached yourself.  And let it go.

Doesn’t mean you won’t end up with the outcome for which you were hoping.  It just means that you don’t get to take credit for it.  That instead you give yourself the opportunity to learn to accept how surrendering the concept of control — letting go of the need to believe that we get to choose our outcomes — doesn’t mean you don’t get some mighty good ones.

Maybe even both your life partner and your children, with all the challenges and triumphs and distractions they bring.

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Tagged as: LOST, loving your child and partner, non-attachment, yoga and motherhood