Getting What's Coming To You

Disclaimer--I watch a lot of TV. Those people on TV are my friends, and they make my life more rich. Naturally, it would be healthier to spend more time with actual people, but actual people are a lot more difficult to fit into my strange schedule.

This week, after returning from my weekend trip, I watched the season finale of the show "Lost," which I had TiVoed.

This show uses flashbacks pretty heavily, and starting at the end of last season, started to flash forward to the future. The flash forwards have continued through this season.

At the end of this season, some of the people who were lost (as indicated by the title) made their way back off the strange island where they had been, and back into civilization.

However, we see in the flash forwards that things are not all peachy keen for these survivors, that many of their lives have fallen apart, that they are pretty much all miserable, and now want to get back to the island they left.

I was thinking last night and today about the things that I want, and what life would be like if those things were achieved. Being a young person, there are always lots of decisions to make in life, and as I move toward one opportunity, I always leave one behind. Presently, I'm working on several different things that I think I really want.

I wonder, if I could see into the future, would those still be the things that I really wanted? How do we know what it is that we want? Or do we never actually get it? Because even if you get what you want, how do you know that you'll still want it? I'm seriously reconsidering the shoes I wore today, even though this morning, I thought that I'd want to wear them.

How on earth is one supposed to make decisions? If all these dreams come true, what if they turn out to not be what I'm looking for at all? What if I end up wanting to go back to my crazy, hallucinogenic, electromagnetic island? (Figuratively speaking, of course...)