The "Amber" Experience

 Yes, yes I did watch it along with everybody else that was glued to the telly for those four nights to see the outcome of Amber and yes I was utterly disappointed with the ending.  However on reflection the disappointment I felt  was actually more about the fact  that this ending  portrays how it is for an awful lot of families; they have  never got the answer to what  happened to their loved ones who have for all it seems disappeared off the face of the earth.

The programme has certainly stirred up a reaction, from twitter to radio stations to the newspapers - everyone in the media and everywhere else having something to say about Amber and the ending over the last couple of days.  I see this morning’s paper has an article about the ending we never got, but although I found it interesting to read and an interesting take on  how they tied it all up, you know I just didn’t buy it.  In actual fact if you think about it there could have been so many different endings written and that is the only reality, everyone will have a different take on what that ending might be and that is part of what we do as people; we project onto things what we like, what we don’t like, how we would like it to be, it’s about things that get triggered in us and how we interpret what has happened and how we would like to draw it to a close.  It may be easier to wrap things up than leave the unknown.

I really enjoyed watching Amber, apart from the fact that they used Lehauntstown as the Luas Station as the place she disappeared from, which to be honest doesn't surprise me if you were to pick a place yes it fits the picture.  I used to walk that road as a teenager and it was spooky then and even with a few more houses being built on it, it is still one spooky road.  It's a lonely, isolated road and you could well imagine someone disappearing without trace on it.   I thought the editing  was extremely clever, it was constantly going back to different days and filling us in on the story and how different people were coping with the horrific situation they found themselves in as a family, trying to put piece by piece together to see if they could solve the mystery and ultimately get their daughter back.

 We saw the mother who never wanted to give up hope, trying to hold everything together and ultimately accepting the fact that she may never find her daughter or get an answer to what happened.  The brother who kept calling his sister on her mobile to either hear her voice, or just to leave a message in the hope that she might hear it and that it would make some difference to the situation and bring her home.  The Dad who was trying and trying to understand what had happened and ultimately put himself in a very precarious situation, delving into the underworld of trafficking and paedophiles to try and get an answer to his question.  In part four we got a real insight into the complete and utter distress the two parents felt at the loss of their daughter, the not knowing and breaking down in tears in each others  arms – heartbreaking.

What I am left with and curious about at the end of it all is how we cope with the not knowing.  I have heard many people relay the message that they wasted four nights watching this Drama to what most of them described as a “Shite” ending!  Other believe the writers were indeed very brave to leave the ending as they did and I believe from reading in the paper that one of the writers has had the experience of a brother-in-law going missing and never being found so must know only too well how this whole experience would impact on a family.

 When you think about it we spend so much of our lives giving away our time, watching telly,  working, doing things, hobbies, having fun, relationships to name just a few.  We have expectations about the outcomes of all the things we put our time into in our everyday lives, however they are only expectations we don’t have control over any of the outcomes of these things we just hope they work out the way we want them too.  The reality is however we never know what one day is going to bring, one hour or in fact one minute – it is the illusion of control - that control that we don’t ultimately have when we think about it.  I think this is what the reaction to Amber is really all about because somewhere we think it should have been wrapped up in a nice tidy little package – rather than deal with the reality of not knowing.  Scenario 1; a happy ending they find their daughter and everyone goes back to living a happy life. Scenario 2; we find out who was responsible for her disappearance she is alive but has suffered; would that have been any easier to take- I don’t think so.  Scenario three; we find out she is dead, she drowned, an accident or someone murdered her or even a suicide, again would it have been any easier to take.  The family would get some answers maybe but they still wouldn’t know exactly what happened and may at some level not want to know.   Again the distress would not I imagine be any easier.  To finish on a quote:

 “I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”  - Richard P. Feynman http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/uncertainty