No Coincidences

Tag: netflix

San Junipero

I really enjoy the show Black Mirror on Netflix.

For those who don’t know the show, each season includes independent episodes that usually (but not always) have a futuristic, technological theme.

One of my favorite episodes is called San Junipero.

I don’t love this episode for its ending. I love it for how it makes me think. Funny enough, I watched the episode a second time, 7 years after the first viewing. Usually when something really makes me think, I pull out my phone and start writing down my thoughts.

In 2025 when I rewatched San Junipero, I pulled out my phone to take notes. I found notes I took 7 years prior. I didn’t remember taking those notes. But they fit exactly what I thought 7 years later watching the episode a second time. Good to see I’m consistent. Typing those thoughts out led to this blog post.

In the show, San Junipero is a virtual reality where people can upload their consciousness to live and experience life much like in the real world. In San Junipero, people can eat, drink, laugh, dance, and do seemingly all of the things that you can do in real life.

The main character is named Yorki. Yorki meets a character named Kelly (I hope it goes without saying that there are about to be spoilers for the episode).

Yorki and Kelly start a romance in San Junipero. In San Junipero, everyone is young and vibrant. We learn that in the real world Yorki is an old woman who was paralyzed at the age of 20 and has spent her entire life in a coma-like state. Kelly is an old woman who was given 3 months to live 6 months ago.

We learn that Kelly was married for many years to a man named Richard. Kelly and Richard… well, I’ll let Kelly tell the story.

The episode comes to a climax when Yorki is trying to convince Kelly to stay with her in San Junipero.

This leads to one of the most powerful monologues I’ve ever seen on television. In exasperation and frustration at Yorki’s request, Kelly exploded (you can watch the exact clip on YouTube HERE):

“49 years. I was with him for 49 years. You can’t begin to imagine. You can’t know. The bond, the commitment, the boredom, the yearning, the laughter, the love of it. The *expletive love. You just cannot know. Everything we sacrificed. The years I gave him. The years he gave me. Did you think to ask? Did it occur to you to ask?

“We had a daughter, Allison. Always difficult, always beautiful. Died at 39 years old, bless her heart. And Richard and I, we felt that heartbreak as one.

“You know when he was dying, Rich said to me, when they offered him this, to pass over, pass through, spend eternity in this *expletive graveyard you’re so in love with, he said, ‘How can I? When she missed out, how can I?’ And so he went. And I wish I could believe he’s with her now, that they’re together, but I don’t. I believe they’re nowhere. Just like you said. Gone…

“And now you give me some sales pitch about how *expletive peachy forever could be. You want to spend forever somewhere nothing matters? End up like Wes. All those lost *expletives at the Quagmire trying anything to feel something, go ahead. But I’m out. I’m gone.”

The episode goes on. You see a coffin being lowered into a grave next to Richard’s tombstone. You think that’s the end.

Black Mirror is known for its twists. I love it for its twists. I hated this twist.

Kelly is back in San Junipero with Yorki. She decided not to “pass on.” She stayed in San Junipero. The show plays background music of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place on Earth.

While this may seem like a happy ending, the broader implications broke my heart.

Obviously, I’m going to take this from a perspective of faith.

There’s a lot to unpack here and a lot to consider. It’s why, despite my dislike for the ending, it’ s still one of my favorite episodes.

Kelly could have “moved on” and spent an eternity with her husband and daughter. Instead she decided to stay in an artificial world.

What is the lesson here?

Her husband Rich had a particle of faith. Just a mustard seed of faith, you might say. Kelly couldn’t exhibit even that. She said herself, “I wish I could believe he’s with her now.” Wish. She Wishes. She hopes, probably. But she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t even give real honest effort. She could only wish and hope but she couldn’t believe. According to Kelly Richard didn’t believe, but clearly he tried to. From a faithful perspective, what did Richard get? An eternity with his beloved daughter. What did Kelly get? An eternity in a fake and counterfeit world.

Kelly took the guarantee in front of her. She took what she knew. She chose earth. She chose an existence of “trying to feel alive” over eternal life.

Kelly’s monologue makes mention of a place called the Quagmire. The definition of quagmire is: “a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot.” A land that gives way underfoot = unsteady, uncertain, unsure. A sandy foundation.

The Quagmire was a disgusting, sad, pathetic place where people in San Junipero went to party. It was all grotesque acts, cage fighting, drugs – all the worst of the world. Why did so many people in San Junipero go to the Quagmire? A hell-hole of debauchery? Kelly in her monologue pointed out the reason the living souls of the dead in San Junipero went there. Why would they go to somewhere so horrible? Just to try to feel alive.

This is another eternal point to consider. The Quagmire clearly represented hell. Hell is a lack of progression. Hell is a lack of purpose.

What is life without purpose? What is your purpose?

Kelly chose a fake world. Will her life there be happy? Maybe. It might even be amazing, from an earthly perspective.

We know that people really will make this choice. When some die, they can’t enjoy an otherworldly experience because they are too attached to this world. It’s the reason Jesus said to leave all earthly things behind and seek after eternal things. There is so much in store for us if we can just seek it out. Some will choose this world and this life because they can’t garner the faith to hope for something so much more.

For those that want a greater blessing, there will be an eternity of love and joy, and things we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around – amazing, spectacular, fantastic things. But if we get too stuck in this world, we’ll miss the opportunity for that so much more.

The fictional Richard hoped for so much more. He wished for so much more. He believed it just enough that he received it. A blessed existence for eternity with his daughter.

I so wished the show would have taken an “eternal perspective” for once. But alas, it is a show of the world.

November 20, 2025
The Haunting of Hill House and Eternity

The Haunting on Hill House is one of the best shows I’ve seen. It’s been out for a while so you’re being forewarned, there will be spoilers. It’s worth watching. Keep in mind there will be some language and mature content. It is still on Netflix. If you haven’t watched, go binge 10 episodes and come back.

In the show, Hill House is evil. It drives those within it to madness. It entraps them and makes them make awful choices. Those who stay too long go crazy and lose themselves to the house. Multiple deaths have occurred in the house and those who die there stay there forever.

The show makes it clear the house is evil. The last episode begins with a quote:

“Certainly, there are places which attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness. It might also be said that some houses are born bad.”

It continues:

“This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself flying together in its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness. Never meant to be lived in. Not a fit place for people, or for love, or for hope.”

Sounds evil right?

Well…

That’s why the title of this post is a “conflicted message.” The above quotes don’t fit with the ending of the show. Call it Hollywood happy endings if you must. I had a different perspective. I thought of the ending in terms of what I know about heaven, and eternity.

The climax of the final episode comes when one of the characters learns the true nature of the home. He learns his father always knew the nature of the home and protected his children from it. We, the viewers, learn alongside this character what has been happening all along.

The show is based around a family who moved into the house. The mother is lost to the home and commits suicide. Before committing suicide, she brings a young girl, the daughter of the groundskeepers, with her. Extremely dark.

The father whose wife committed this act tells the parents of the young girl that he plans to burn the house to the ground, burn the hill, and salt the earth. They beg him not to do it. Their daughter is now a part of this home. She appears as a living, breathing child, though she is none of those things. Her soul belongs to the house.

The father agrees to keep the groundskeeping family on to protect the home and spend the rest of their lives with their now perpetually 9-year-old daughter. The father/owner of the home leaves the home, and his dead wife, and takes his kids away. He wants to protect them from the home and let them experience life.

We learn at the end that the father would occasionally visit the home to be with his wife. His wife experiences life as some sort of dream. She doesn’t know how much time has passed. She doesn’t fully comprehend her situation. Part of her mind appears to have been lost.

Back to the climax of the show. Many years after the initial tragedy of losing his wife to the house, we see the father come back one last time. He ends his life there so he can spend the rest of time with his wife who he loves. The ultimate emotional moment of the show comes when the groundskeeper carries in his dying wife, and with tears he sees her with his daughter and a baby. I assume it is a baby that died in the home long ago. What the old groundskeeper is seeing is heaven. He is seeing the opportunity to be with his wife, daughter, and baby forever.

There are two ways to look at this. Either Hill House is evil and what they are seeing is a counterfeit of heaven. Those who die there will spend some amount of time there, whether it be 100 or 500 or 10,000 years, but they won’t spend eternity there together.

Or.

The other option is this is heaven. The family will spend the rest of time and eternity there together. I’ll take the happy ending.

What I know of heaven is that it will be where families are together forever. Families are meant to be together. Families are meant to be eternal. While many believe the family unit is just an earthly device, I cry foul! God gave us this powerful, important, sustaining, empowering, frustrating, growth promoting unit only to see it demolished after our test here? Doesn’t make sense.

Families are forever. Families are eternal. It’s the great truth of the gospel. It’s a great comfort to me, as I sit here and look at my daughters. Heaven can’t be heaven unless I’m with them forever.

There were some good themes in this show that made me think. There’s a whole other spiritual implication from this show that analogizes leaving the Garden of Eden. It was a deep show if you let it be. But the greatest message was at the end – about family, about how important family is, that there is nothing more important than being with your family.

That is what God has given us: eternal families. What a blessing that is.

“Love is the relinquishment of logic. The willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it, or we fight it. But we cannot meet it halfway.”

May 18, 2023
We’re Being Watched

Beth just said something that gave me the heebie-jeebies, even though it’s something we already know, and unfortunately, are starting to accept.

Beth said, “You know what I just realized? Whenever we watch YouTube TV kids shows, all of the ads are super girly stuff. They totally know we have a daughter.”

They.

Remember in the good old days when we would have conversations about skiing and then ski gear would show up as an ad on our phone/computer/device? Do you remember when we transitioned from “wow that’s really weird…” to “are they listening to me?…” to “oh they’re listening good.”

That last part came after it became public knowledge that our mics and search history and everything about us was being turned into marketing and advertisement data.

This will be a short post. Re-read the end of The Social Dilemma where i discuss how to protect our families from becoming too attached to our devices. Also re-read The Social Dilemma part 2 and consider what we can do to protect ourselves and our families from advertisers. Be wary of what is happening to our children. They are growing up in a world where MY TV knows I have a girl and is targeting her before she can even walk. If that doesn’t scare you, at least a little bit, it should.

Be cautious about what we expose our kids to. Be cautious about what we post and share. Protect them.

I know in this world it’s impossible for “them” to not know I have a daughter by now. I know there’s only so much we can do. But what I can try to control is how she is influenced by their advances. I will do my best for my whole life to protect Ivy against targeted advertising and the influences of the media on her growing mind.

April 14, 2022
100th Post
100 posts! I thought it warranted a special post. You never know when you start something like a blog if you’ll actually stick to it. Here I am a year and a half and 100 posts later, with hundreds still to go.

I figured as part of my first 100 posts I could mention the top 5 most read:
It’s interesting what this list shows. Life and death.

It was scary starting a blog. It’s basically a public diary. I’m excited for Ivy to read it one day. Thank you to everyone who has read and supported. The primary motivation in writing and sharing these posts has always been to share my faith story and hopefully help others in some tiny way. If my story or my thoughts have helped one person think about life or come closer to Jesus Christ, then a million hours (close to how much time I’ve put into this) is worth it.

I re-read my first post to prepare for writing this. In reading that, I was kind of surprised by how open and vulnerable I made that. It inspired me to share another more personal post.

As I read that very first post I was reminded why I decided to write this. I had my own very unique journey back to God and I hoped it could help someone, whether that be back to God or to God for the first time. During those years where I removed God completely from my life, I feared every day I was away from Him that I’d never be able to return. I know there are so many people out there that feel the same way. There are also people that have never known God, prayer, repentance, all these things some of us take for granted. These are abstract concepts to many, I know.

I want to share that I believe God is for everyone. As the world screams at us, “You have your screens, your technology, your books, universities, learning, society with its conveyer belt of packaged food, water always, peace, prosperity. Watch Netflix! Relax! All is well (2 Nephi 28:21). Set aside thoughts of life, death, and purpose. You have your purpose, live and let live.” The world is telling us that despite the chaos around us, everything is fine, and we don’t need God. I testify that all is well IF we have God.

I want to tell everyone, there is more than what the world screams at us is important. There is much, much more. I want to tell everyone who will listen, God is for you. If you’ve ever known Him, if you’ve never known Him, if you consider Him a complete foreign concept, if you consider Him a myth, He is for you and He is there for you. You can come to Him, and when you do, your life changes.

That’s what sticks with me most when I think about those years away from God. I removed Him, but He was never gone. We can’t remove our Father. This makes us accountable; it can be a frightening concept if we fear Him. We don’t need to fear Him. He is only there out of love. He will never leave us.

I bear my testimony of the most important things: God is our Father, and He does love us. Jesus Christ did something unimaginable. Would you die for your child? Would you suffer the punishment for the sins of your child? Probably. Would you die for the person torturing you? Christ did. He suffered for all of us, really suffered and felt. I have been blessed to have the Holy Ghost be a part of my life when I’ve made good choices, since it was conferred upon me when I was 9 years old. Joseph Smith did see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. He translated the Book of Mormon from ancient records. The temples that are now dotting the earth are God’s temples. The temples are clean and holy. I can be with my family forever because of what Christ did for me in Gethsemane and on the cross.

I know this to be true. This knowledge brings purpose and understanding to my life. It doesn’t make trials go away but it makes them understandable.

I wish everyone would consider the great plan of salvation, The Plan of Happiness. But we are distracted.

I have been so blessed by God and I ask Him constantly what I’ve done to be afforded so much. The least I can do is share it with others, and I am glad to do so.

I leave this testimony for my daughter, and my family, and all those I care about to read- forever. I leave it in the name of my Redeemer, my Savior, my King, Jesus Christ.

Amen.
October 21, 2021
The Social Dilemma part 2
I am worried about the youth today.

I don’t have a Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, how many etceteras do I need nowadays?

I’ve really tried to follow the advice I wrote about from my first post on The Social Dilemma (Netflix). For a while I turned off suggested videos in YouTube, but I found the blank pages and the difficulty in finding what I was looking for to be too much to deal with. Instead, I only go to YouTube with a purpose and try as best as I can to watch only the video I go there to watch. As of this writing the suggested videos in my YouTube has ballooned to 273 (273 videos!) since I’ve stopped looking at suggested videos. That’s a little red 273 on my phone home screen. That’s 273 times YouTube has said, “this video is just right for you.” That is countless hours (or hours I don’t want to count) of video footage YouTube has suggested to me. Yikes. I’m going to continue to avoid those videos and see how ludicrous that 273 number can become.

I’ve also tried not to use Google which I’ve found to be way harder than I anticipated. There’s a reason Google has the best search results, and that reason is they don’t care about your privacy. With my job in IT support, I’ve found it impossible to use other search engines. I still have the Qwant extension installed in my Google Chrome but find myself searching through Google anyway.

Like YouTube, I avoid Facebook as much as I can. As I write this, checking my battery usage, Facebook is still 11% of my total battery used. When I do get on Facebook, the worst thing that can happen is I watch a video. It’s the same reason I avoid YouTube as much as possible. Facebook I find to be much worse than YouTube, at least for me. Let me explain what happens when I get on Facebook and if I watch a video:
1. I stumble upon a video title that I can’t avoid watching. Something like, “The reason Donovan Mitchell will never win a championship for Utah.”
  - Now I’m stuck.
2. That video ends and is followed by, “I gave $1,000,000 to a stranger on the street!”
  - I’m losing my free will.
3. Next video, “I bought 10,000 black widows and put them in my mom’s bathroom!”
I’ll emerge from a sequence of videos like the above hours later and think to myself, “what just happened?”

The above is only a slight exaggeration.

The disconcerting, uncomfortable, and completely frightening truth is – once I watch that first, then second, then third video that has clearly been sent because they know it catches my attention – it’s really difficult for me to get away. I’ll feel it happening. Like, I’ll be on minute 6 of a 9-minute video and think, “after this one I’m done.” Then as minute 8 starts to end I get this feeling, this urge. Like – I have to watch another one. I’ll feel this urge. I’ll fight it. And somehow, I end up watching another video. I may sound dramatic, but it’s truly terrifying.

Am I the only one?

Beth and I have gotten into a routine with Ivy’s sleeping where I’m usually up briefly with Ivy around 11pm and Beth is up with her briefly around 4am.

Every once in a while (not often), I wake in the morning to a 4:15am text from Beth with some video or article. I realize that, in a stupor, she was drawn to her phone. This likely happened while she was lying in bed watching the baby monitor, waiting to see if Ivy would fall back asleep so she could go to sleep.

Recently Beth took a picture of Ivy and I together on the couch. I watched Beth open Facebook to share the picture. I watched Beth somehow end up finding herself watching some video. 10 minutes later, talking to herself, Beth said something like, “what was I doing?…”

I told her she likely looked at her phone to post a picture.

“Oh yeah…” was her reply.

I’m not the only one.

Beth and I aren’t the only ones.

Back to the first sentence I wrote for this post. I am AFRAID for the youth today. How do they survive in a world where advertisers know what they want to see, then put it directly into their hand over.. and over…and over…..and over……

Something needs to be done for our youth, but I’m not sure what. It’s too easy for them to be completely enveloped in this digital world. We are frighteningly close to a Black Mirror-esc existence where kids only exist in their phones. Maybe the only way we can help our youth is leading by example.

I try to only be on my phone to read the scriptures. I’m not even great at responding to messages, as some of you know. I read physical books. I’m aware of Facebook’s and other social media companies’ pull on my attention, and I try to fight it. I think it’s important we teach our kids the same thing.

This must be the way we can help kids today. Lead by example. Read books. Show that the phone can be set aside. Go on day trips where the phone is not allowed to come. Set a requirement where there are no phones after dinner. I don’t know, anything! Something needs to be done and this is the first place to start.

Otherwise the below picture is every family’s future. And that is a sad future.

*Credit to photographer Eric Pickersgill who took these pictures depicting people with their mobile phones and devices removed from the photo.
July 15, 2021