Nora Durst is full of sh*t

This is a post about the finale of The Leftovers, my favorite TV drama.

I've read some people assume that Nora's story about traveling to the "other side" was God's honest truth. I disagree.

This is not a show about science fiction. The Leftovers is a show about how people respond to tragedy, so it's important to understand what I mean by tragedy.

Tragedy is something that does not make rational sense. It is absurd. It is what talking heads on TV talk about when they describe something as a "senseless act of violence" because it makes no sense to us. 

The best example is the Sandy Hook shooting. A young man took his gun and killed 20-something children whom he did not know. That sentence makes no goddamn sense. He gained no utility from that act.

Not only was this act terrifying because we can empathize with those parents, it was terrifying because it brought down the illusion of order in our world. It showed us that things that make no sense can happen to anyone.

The way people respond to this type of tragedy is by creating a story. Some choose the story of easy access to guns. For some it's a lack of mental health support. For others it's violent video games or drugs or social isolation. But none of these stories really make the tragedy make sense, but they are a better story then senselessness. 

My favorite example was a Facebook post from my old boss. A strong-faith Christian man, he wrote about how God was with those children when they died. It didn't make sense, but I could tell he put a lot of thought into it and it helped him process the tragedy and retain his faith.

In The Leftovers, it makes sense that church attendance would see a decline. The departure was so senseless, that people stopped being able to believe in something that helped their lives make sense. The Matt Jamison character works so hard to find dirt on the departed because he has to believe that they were taken for a reason.

But for most people it wasn't enough, so they began to create their own stories: the Guilty Remnant, Holy Wayne, the Eddie Winslow character, and Miracle, Texas. Even holdouts like Kevin Garvey eventually began to believe he was the second coming of Christ. Nora was the only character who refused to write her own fiction. She even made it her mission to expose frauds.

It also makes sense that the protagonist was a cop, someone who's role was to maintain order in the face is increasing disorder as people clung to crazier ideas to try and make sense of what happened.

The finale wasn't a story about Nora finding out what happened to her family. It was a story about her finally creating her own story. If you pay attention, her tale concludes that her family is actually better off wherever they are. Self-delusion is the path to comfort and happiness in the face of tragedy. The awareness of senselessness will drown you. She had to find the perfect story to be able to move on and start her new life with Kevin.