I am not heartless, so like any Lost fan I've revisited some favorites over the years (always "Do No Harm," "Greatest Hits," or "The Constant," and one anomalous viewing of "LaFleur"). .

A few months ago, I did something either very funny or very fucked up or both, and decided to watch Season 3's "Stranger in a Strange Land," a notoriously rough episode and one of the show's worst, on a flight to Thailand (this is the episode about Jack living in Phuket and doing truly nothing of import).

At the end of the episode, Michael Giacchino's stirring score kicked in like the emotional equivalent of an electromagnetic implosion — and in that moment, I knew I had to rewatch all of Lost.

To watch any episode was to buy in to days, weeks, or years of tantalizing mystery, suspense, and emotional investment.

Season 6 is obviously clunky because at that point everything outside of Jacob, the Man in Black, and half a dozen main characters was lip service — unimportant and ultimately unaddressed, weighing down the show's final hours before being blown into oblivion like Leslie Arzt.

But it is also impossible, if you've spent 121 episodes with these characters, to stay dry-eyed during that final scene and not want them to stay awhile longer.

When I think about what Lost means to me 10 years since its completion, it has almost nothing to do with the actual story and everything to do with who and where I was as I witnessed it unfolding.

I think about the people I've loved and lost since the show ended, and about how unlikely and special it was that our paths crossed at all, that they may cross again in the proverbial flash-sideways or flash-forward

My heart swells for my friends as it does for these characters, with whom I spent countless crucial hours in a strange and unfamiliar place. 

I can't think of many shows where most of the core characters didn't know each other at all before events of the pilot

I consider myself lucky to have found Lost when I did, and no matter how many years go by, I can always, if I have to, go back