Found; as in, not Lost

Now that we have seen that we create our own nightmares, our own versions of hell, and our own failed attempts at meaning/ success/ rescue/ redemption/ love/ revenge/ power/ _____ (insert your preference here); now that our heartstrings have been stretched by images of the sacrifices we are willing to make when we love others more than we desire anything for ourselves (I'm refering to the series Lost, in case you missed seeing the show) -- now, perhaps, we can look at what can be found in life, rather than lost.

The other day I was watching a couple of TV shows at once, and was moved to consider what we find out when we "find ourselves"; what happens when we stop being lost. The two TV shows were Lost and Life: two sides of the same argument, perhaps? If we leave aside the epic nature of the first and the smaller scope of the second, we find ourselves in story arcs that move from the light of life into the light of understanding; in both cases, however, this light of understanding is filled with one overwhelming emotion, and it is this emotion that we have the most trouble naming or describing. It defies easy definition--we just know it when we experience it.

This gently quirky two-season series opens with the protagonist standing in bright sunlight, his face upturned in reverie. Charlie Crews has just been exonerated of a crime for which he was framed and for which served twelve years: the grisly murders of a family to whom he was a trusted friend. If that is not horror enough, add to that the fact that he was a cop, who was so badly beaten by other inmates that he spent much of his first year in the prison hospital.

It soon appears that he survived by reading up on an introduction to Zen Buddhism, which is a contrast in thought process from his pragmatic approach to his existence; the result, however, is a personality constantly striving to live in the moment and to accept the uncertain nature of existence.  His reactions to Zen Buddhism are always a refreshing take on the tenets of Zen philosophy, causing him even to choose to welcome the fact that, as he says, the universe would appear to be making fun of us. Why? "Maybe it's insecure," he quips.

Having received a settlement of some $50m along with his exoneration and release from prison, Charlie is in a unique position to leave his past behind. He doesn't. Instead, he rejoins the police force as a detective so that he can investigate the conspiracy and find the people responsible for framing him. "You don't have to understand 'here' to be 'here,'" is his response to a query from his new partner, a young detective called Dani Reese.

The series has a couple of 'frames' (in the literary, rather than the criminal sense): the documentary that is being made about Crews and his case, and from which scenes are shown throughout the series; and a different choral voice: the zen aphorisms we hear on the cassette tape Crews listens to. Both of these devices provide much-needed exposition about what happened to Crews -- the "documentary" giving other people's views and accounts of what happened during and after the trial twelve years before, and the cassette tape giving a possible reason for Crews having the emotional strength to survive his prison sentence with any vestige of sanity at all.

From the first episode onwards it is clear that Crews is not a typical detective employing typical strategies.  He is observant and approaches cases with instinct and a deep understanding of human nature. His approach is unconventional, but exhibits a compassion for the weak and a steely shield against the façade of the hardened criminal. At the first crime scene he investigates, he uncovers the most pertinent evidence -- after the scene had already been searched by the uniformed officers -- by "questioning" the dog -- going to look at why the dog seems to be guarding something in another part of the yard.

Asking the dog turns out to be the most effective means of discovery. That sets the tone for the series, presenting Crews as a highly capable yet suspect detective. His department thinks he is seeking revenge; it is left ambiguous for the viewer what Crews's motives are for filling a wall in his house with the photos and news clips pertaining to anyone who might have been implicated in setting him up.

Instead, we are privy to a voiceover quoting from the book Crews has been reading in prison (and now listens to in his car) that advocates achieving a peaceful soul. Such statements as "revenge is a poison we swallow ourselves" imply that he is seeking information about the crime for which he was committed, rather than vengeance.

In the first season finale Crews locates the man who killed the family he was convicted of having murdered. As he speeds towards this encounter, he listens to the following:

• Zen recording: [voiceover] The Buddha was asked if he ever felt anger. "Of course," said the Buddha. The Buddha was asked if he ever felt the desire to strike another. "Of course," said the Buddha. "But if I am connected to all things," said the Buddha, "hurting another is hurting myself. And how does that better me?"
• Crews: (throwing the cassette out the car window) Because it just does.

Aside from being a really funny line (in the Die Hard tradition), his intention at that point is clearly violent. But life is always more complicated than it first appears, and he ends up learning there is someone higher up than the killer responsible for the frame.

I don't pretend to understand Zen; it is a much over-used word in the West to designate anything meditative, Eastern, or inscrutably philosophical. I don't know if the (invented) text (by a "C. W. Steward") called The Path to Zen is a faithful interpretation of such important teachers as Keizan Zenji (1300s) and Eihei Dogen (1200s); it all sounds very plausible to me, and the manner in which Crews undercuts the seriousness of anyone else's references to Zen in the series can be very funny indeed ("I'd like to jump out of an airplane."  Reese: "Why? so that you can be at one with the sky or something?" "No; I just want to jump out of a plane").

But Charlie Crews's new life includes one facet that we would not associate with Zen Buddhism, and that is needful violence, violence that is necessary for the good of the community, and thus -- in LA, at any rate! -- that promotes the attainment of a peaceful soul. His job as cop puts him in the path of violent offenders, of course; but there are also a few comments throughout the series about a prison officer who mysteriously died while Crews was incarcerated. As the viewer gets to know Crews, it becomes apparent that the prison guard in question must have been a particularly nasty bully, and the likelihood that Crews killed him to protect Ted is implied.

We see him show compassion to petty crooks, but angry retribution towards mean-spirited offenders. He tracks down Neil Cuddy (who has beaten up Crews's lawyer) and beats him to a pulp; he routinely uses violence in apprehending suspects, and finally (and most effectively) against Roman Nevikov, the sociopath. He has spent twelve years in prison; of course he has learned how to defend himself with a knife or with his fists. Prison changes people: everyone says so. So how can Crews achieve anything like peace?

At the same time, we see him developing a growing compassion for all the people who did not stand by him during his trial. Once he learns everyone's story, or once he becomes more used to trust as a possibility again (with his ex-partner Bobby Stark; with his ex-wife, for whom he felt the most anger during his imprisonments; and with new acquaintences such as new partner Dani Reese, who backs him up, stands by him, and adamantly supports on several occasions, including in the first episode)--then he finds it easy to have a peaceful soul.

Forgiving those who had let him down comes next. After his wife didn't believe he was innocent, after she divorced him, after he was left in prison for 12 years--he came out of incarceration with no trust in anyone except his lawyer and Ted, another ex-con. He does not look for any new relationships, delighting in (innocently, and with a sense of playful fun rather than any lasciviousness) "ladies of possibly suspect morality" (not hookers, of course: he's a cop, after all) and his obsession with his wife and her new husband stems from anger and hurt.

But he discovers that others were acting not out of callous disregard for his situation, but out of fear for their jobs or lives. This he can empathize with, such as when he later discovers that FBI Agent Bodner is only working for Roman because Nevikov has threatened Bodner's family. Of course Bodner is going to try to protect them.

Then he forgives Jennifer (the ex-wife). Then he forgives Kyle Hollis, the man who committed the murders for which he was imprisoned. Then, in the final episode of the series, several missing pieces fall into place: he realizes that Rayborn, who set him up (forget Jack Reese, Dani's father, another victim), is not directly responsible for Hollis's actions; he realizes, after a few episodes of Reese being absent, that she is important to him; and, perhaps most importantly, he remembers that he knew Tom Sebold well, and knew that he would not have laundered money or skimmed from the LA Bank thieves. It takes him a long time to realize this, after 12 years of thinking that everyone had a price, and that everyone he had trusted had betrayed him.

This gives him a different kind of power: not the determination with which he hunted Hollis, but the certainty of the truth of one of the aphorisms that he can't even listen to as he searches for Reese: that one plus one is one . If you add one unit to another , you are not making two separate units, you are producing one . And so we are left with a final voiceover, the complete aphorism that Charlie couldn't listen to before, when he was trying to set up any method possible to get the kidnapped Reese out of Roman's clutches (including handing over another human being, Rayborn, as ransom, but finally handing himself over instead) -- that one plus one is one, and that "we even have a word for 'you plus one' --

"-- that word is 'love.'"