Which is Easier: Detonating an H-Bomb or Talking it Out?

Warning! This post contains some spoilers for this week’s Season 5 finale of Lost. Consider yourself warned!

Lost is a great show, and the Season 5 finale was awesome. I loved it. But there was one bit of spurious logic that got me thinking (only one? Ok, maybe there were more, but it’s a great show and I only want to talk about the one right now…).

For those who don’t watch Lost (what’s wrong with you people?!) let me fill you in: One of the characters (Jack) wants to detonate a hydrogen bomb in an effort to undue the last five years. Basically he sees it as a giant “reset button” that will erase the years of struggle and trial and tribulation.

Warning for kids: Do not try this at home! This is a TV show. If you attempt to detonate an H-bomb to reverse time, chances are you will just blow yourself up. If not, you will most certainly get grounded. So don’t try it (looks like you’re gonna have to stick with high school years you got!)

When Sawyer (another character who used to be a degenerate con-man but has become something of a bad ass Heathcliff Huxtable) asks Jack why he wants to undue time, Jack says, “I had her. And I lost her.”

You read that right. Jack wants to BLOW UP A HYDROGEN BOMB DO GET BACK THE WOMAN HE LOVES?? (Lost is awesome but it has this weird soap opera side that is usually ponderous and makes characters do stupid things. Like blow up nuclear devices)

Sawyer then tells Jack to just go talk to the girl (Kate). Jack basically says “no, that won’t work.”

What.

The.

@#$%…?

Jack sees talking with the woman he loves and used to live with as a futile effort, but blowing up a hydrogen bomb to plug a leak in an as yet to be explained (to us or him) electromagnetic anomaly makes sense?! Oh, and there’s also the chance that the H-bomb will kill a lot of people.

Take it in again: blowing up a hydrogen bomb is easier than talking out your problems.

Ok, this is a TV show, and a sci-fi/fantasy one at that. But there are a couple of lessons to pull:

Lesson #1: If you are trying to reconcile with an ex, and talking it out doesn’t work, move on. Don’t pull some crazy big stunt. If you can’t communicate enough to fix your problems, how are you going to communicate well enough to keep the relationship together? You can’t just detonate an H-bomb every time your girlfriend makes you turn off Sunday football to go antiquing.

Lesson #2: If it takes an H-bomb to reconcile a relationship, it probably wasn’t that strong a relationship to begin with. (Do I need to explain this further?)

Lesson #3: Communication is hard. But so are many things worth doing in life…

How many times have you avoided having a “crucial conversation” because it seemed to hard? How often do you make your life more difficult and less efficient by engaging in huge activities designed to get you out of having those conversations?

Take a look at the relationships you have now. If there are conversations you are avoiding, especially if you are doing ridiculous things to avoid having those conversations, commit to “talking it out.” The few minutes you take now could save you a huge amount of time and effort.

Of course, if you happen to have an H-bomb, that changes everything. Just make sure you blow it up in 1977 at the Swan station on the Island. Otherwise people might get the wrong idea.

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