Sunday\u2019s New York Times featured a fascinating profile of Damon Lindelof<\/a>, who served as co-showrunner (along with Carlton Cuse) of the TV series \u201cLost.\u201d<\/a> Two of the primary tensions throughout the show\u2019s six seasons were the struggle of the main character, Jack Shephard, to believe in a power greater than himself \u2013 and also to come to terms with the fact that his now-dead father was a distant soul to him during his life.<\/p>\n In profiling Lindelof, as he prepares for the premiere of his latest series \u201cThe Leftovers,\u201d writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner reveals that element of the story was largely based on Lindelof\u2019s own background.<\/p>\n Brodesser-Akner writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Part of what affected Lindelof so deeply about \u201cLost\u201d is that he created the show in his own image. Jack, the show\u2019s hero, became an avatar for Lindelof, at least in Lindelof\u2019s mind: a man who had just lost his father, who had been given the burden of leadership that he didn\u2019t feel ready or willing to handle.<\/p>\n Lindelof grew up in Teaneck, N.J., the only child of an outgoing schoolteacher who was raised in a traditional Jewish family, and an introverted banker who was an atheist. \u201cThere was this real fungible kind of romantic love,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there was no pragmatic basis for it.\u201d<\/p>\n He and his mother, Susan, were close; he would tell her stories from a very young age \u2014 as early as 2 \u00bd years, she recalls \u2014 mostly about robots and spaceships, asking her to write them down, which she would. His father, David, was more distant. He would often retreat into the attic of the house, where he kept a study. When Lindelof was 11, his father moved out. Lindelof moved from his bedroom to the attic, into his father\u2019s old space. It was cold, and he often hit his head on the A-frame, he recalls, but it was easier to transition to an older version of himself without totally turning his back on the \u201cStar Wars\u201d sheets and \u201cBatman\u201d alarm clock that remained in his childhood bedroom.<\/p>\n His relationship with his father got a little better once, in the wake of his parents\u2019 divorce, they began to spend time alone together, and also once Lindelof got older. They were never able to trade in emotion, but they were able to trade in the popular culture of comic books and sci-fi that the older Lindelof loved so much. \u201cLook, who isn\u2019t withholding?\u201d Lindelof asks. \u201cEspecially in our folks\u2019 generation, that was actually the way everyone was until Dr. Spock came along. My mom decided to break from the way that she was parented and do the exact opposite.\u201d But his father resisted. His father\u2019s philosophy, he recalls, was: \u201cI can love my son. I can hang out with my son. I can share things with my son. But I\u2019m not going to tell my son that I\u2019m proud of him or that he can do anything that he wants because those things are not necessarily true. He never said to me, \u2018You don\u2019t have what it takes.\u2019 That was just my deduction based on not being told that I had what it takes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Shortly before Lindelof began writing and overseeing \u201cLost,\u201d his father passed away. As the series begins, Jack Shephard is transporting his father Christian, who recently died, from Australia to Los Angeles. Coming to terms with their strained relationship in life takes up much of Jack\u2019s story and struggles on the island. Jack both loved his father and resented him for being so distant and belligerent through much of their lives, even when they worked together in the same hospital.<\/p>\n As the story is told in flashbacks, it wasn\u2019t until Christian confronted his own demons that he was able to reach out to Jack on a fatherly level. But Jack was so damaged by their history, he repeated his father\u2019s own patterns and pushed him away.<\/p>\n Ironically \u2013 or maybe purposefully would be a better word \u2013 it is the soul of Christian Shephard who becomes a means of Jack\u2019s ultimate salvation at the end of the series. The harsh and unbelieving father he knew came to terms with his own sins before he died and found his way to a better place in the afterlife, a place from which he could help his son in a way that he never did in life.<\/p>\n In light of Lindelof\u2019s history with his own father and the tension between Judaism and atheism he experienced in his own family, Jack\u2019s character arc becomes even more poignant.<\/p>\n From a storytelling perspective, Lindelof reminds me of Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) in the movie \u201cSaving Mr. Banks,\u201d which chronicles Disney\u2019s efforts to convince P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to sell him the rights to her book \u201cMary Poppins.\u201d Travers is reluctant because, through the character of George Banks, the story was her way of redeeming her father, whose life came to a sad end. Travers feared Disney would make his adaptation too sappy and happy.<\/p>\n Towards the end of the film, Disney sits down with Travers and delivers a touching definition of storytelling that can also apply to Lindelof addressing his father issues in \u201cLost.\u201d Disney says, \u201cWe all have our sad tales, but don\u2019t you want to finish the story, let it all go and have a life that isn\u2019t dictated by the past? It\u2019s not the children [Mary Poppins] comes to save; it\u2019s their father. It\u2019s your father\u2026That\u2019s what this is all about, all of it, everything\u2026George Banks will be honored. George Banks will be redeemed \u2013 and all he stands for saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. It\u2019s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Lindelof and Cuse have taken a lot of abuse about their ending of \u201cLost\u201d from people who hated the spiritual and supernatural nature of it, they did manage to \u201crestore order with imagination\u201d and \u201cinstill hope\u201d through their story. In a world that often seems violent and random and harsh, they found a larger purpose and opportunities for redemption and the courage to say, \u201cThis world is NOT the end.\u201d<\/p>\n In Lindelof\u2019s case (and maybe in Cuse\u2019s as well), this was relevant on a personal level. Storytelling allowed him to connect with his father on a deeper level than he ever perhaps did in life. It also allowed him to portray the belief that their story isn\u2019t really over because his father is no longer alive.<\/p>\n Christopher Award-winning author of \u201cLove and Salt\u201d Jessica Mesman Griffith may have expressed this belief best when talking about the death of her own mother during an interview<\/a>. She said, \u201cI needed to acknowledge death, to acknowledge that suffering was a reality and something I had endured\u2026I needed a way to feel that this story was not over with my mother and the other people we had lost \u2013 that we were going to be able to have some connection with them. It\u2019s not something we\u2019re waiting for, it\u2019s not something that\u2019s going to happen when we die. It\u2019s something that we have access to right now. There\u2019s not a wall between us and heaven. It\u2019s much more permeable than we might believe.\u201d<\/p>\n Griffith found that connection through her Catholic faith. Lindelof seems to have found it through storytelling and, if not a full out embrace of religious faith, at least an embrace of \u201cmystery.\u201d As he told Brodesser-Akner, \u201cThere are people who are comfortable with mystery. And there are people who are uncomfortable with mystery. I\u2019m very comfortable with mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n