'Lost': A Shot at Redemption

STAGE 5: Learning to live a new life with a new code of behavior.
SEASON 5 JACK: A truly humbled Jack finally realized that his own strength was not only insufficient, but deeply flawed, and appealed to the ''greater power'' of his castaway community (and fellow recovering addicts) and converted to a whole new world view — faith in the ''greater power'' of the Island. (See: ''316'')

Back on the Island, a conspicuously, suspiciously serene Jack seemed (again with the conspicuous stressing!) determined to live out the chief values of the sobriety prayer: acceptance; change; discernment. Those three values were dramatized via the central question of last season's time travel storyline: Is the past something that is fixed and must be accepted (''whatever happened, happened''), or is it pliable and changeable? Jack waited on the Island to give him wisdom on what to do. Notice Jack's discernment on the matter. He passed on the opportunity to save Young Ben by performing surgery, believing the boy's fate was beyond his control — an expression of acceptance that stood in seemingly healthy contrast to his feverish, reckless handling of the Boone crisis in season 1. Jack then thought he got the Island epiphany he was looking for when Daniel Faraday showed up with his audacious Jughead gambit. But I think Jughead was a temptation that Jack the ''greater power''-trusting, Counter Enlightenment-reconstructed, recovering fixer addict should have resisted. Faraday arrived preaching the Enlightenment gospel of ''the Variable'' — that men are free radicals capable of mastering their circumstances through force of free will. Put another way: Faraday was tempting Jack to re-embrace his old code of behavior. And he did.

But more than anything, Jack was enticed by the proposed ''benefits'' of Faraday's plan: Negation. Avoidance. A literal clean slate. A chance to clear his conscience; a chance to erase himself from people's lives; a chance to do the impossible and ''unkill'' all the people he couldn't save. Yet this is not the way to recovery for Jack. Again, according to AA, part of the benefit to the recovering addict of making amends should be the liberation from regret. This is done by living with knowledge of the past, not destroying it. My guess is that Jughead will provide Jack with the illusion of relief from his ''issues,'' but in reality, they've only been momentarily suppressed. Eventually, they will come back, harder and stronger than ever, like the many headed Hydra that grows two more ugly, biting noggins back after losing one. True atonement, lasting restoration requires a day-to-day, even minute-to-minute commitment to change. Jack the Addict must find a way to live day to day, with grace for his past, wisdom for his present, hope for his future. Only then might he be able to fulfill the sixth and final phase of recovery:

STAGE SIX: Helping others that suffer from the same addictions or compulsions.
SEASON 6 JACK: TBD, of course. I believe Season 6 will complete the project of recovery and redemption that Lost has been telling through Jack and so many other characters. And I also think it will tell the story of how Reconstructed Jack will find a way to help one man in particular, someone who suffers from addictions similar to his own: his alcoholic father. How will Jack do that, especially since Christian Shephard is, like, dead? I'll explain next week as I begin unspooling My Final Theory of Lost, which compared to this week's column, will be much more geektastically fun and considerably less...boring. Thanks for hanging in there with me, folks. Comments and complaints can be posted below or sent to docjensenew@gmail.com. Also, follow me on Twitter @ewdocjensen.

Namaste! Doc Jensen