What I Learned From Don Draper

Credit: AMC

*Spoilers ahead if you have not seen series finale of Mad Men*

I have been reading and contemplating many things after the Mad Men finale last Sunday night. I had written earlier that I wanted answers as to why Don (Jon Hamm) had been seeing dead people and asking questions that I had been for many seasons like ; Does he have cancer or a brain tumor or is something wrong with him from all his years of basically being an alcoholic? I was looking at myself thinking am I this negative and cynical in general that I need him to be sick or die in order to have bigger answers about a TV character! I mean seriously, what is wrong with me? I love Don! I always have and I always will. I rooted for him even when I scolded him within my own mind for his sometimes or mostly bad decisions all seven seasons. I loved his obvious love and admiration (even when cloaked) for Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and his dry wit and love of being good at his job. And as the viewer of course I knew there was something bigger at play what with his back story of being raised by a prostitute in a brothel and assuming another mans name. But how could I not have seen the moral of the story all these years or at least where it was headed. Don was just baffled by love and looking for it while not understanding love nor feeling capable of it himself. Sure maybe he got close sometimes but Betty was a narcissistic bitch mostly and Megan was the sexy secretary that was maybe just infatuated. He only probably truly only let himself love his first wife that knew his true identity; which was bore in the true bonds of friendship more then anything else. He was lost and trying to overcompensate for that fact. It was always plain to see and I did see that. But between passing out stone cold on the floor and constantly having visions of dead people my mind went to the conclusion of he's crazy, he's sick, and the whole seventh season is going to be them showing us that.  I am truly glad I was wrong. I can't remember the last time a series finale of a show has made me happier or taught me more about life. Don wasn't sick he just could never make the two people he was mesh. He couldn't be Don Draper and Dick Whitman which certainly we see throughout the show especially at the end. Don wanted to be loved and be seen which of course couldn't happen via his job or living through some assumed identity. He had to learn to be happy with himself first before trying to make other people happy all the while hiding from who he really was. Haven't we all had those times of questions in our life... Who am I? What am I meant to do on this planet? What is true love? How do I become successful? I could go on and on. You know what I learned from Don Draper? I learned you have to discover how to be happy; being happy is a choice and maybe, maybe just one day it'll  hit you out of the blue (if your lucky it'll happen at a retreat in Big Sur). Life is a choice, happiness is a choice, love is a choice, it is a living breathing all encompassing thing that you can't shut down with negativity or drowning your sorrows, or pretending to be someone you aren't. That is what I will take away from watching Don's journey.

My Bottom Line: This last episode of Mad Men will stay in a special place of my heart for some time. I am glad I was so dead wrong about where they were going to go with the finale and season seven in particular. Don Draper was an idea as much as he was an idea man. He is meant to be who he is which is Dick Whitman. I am one of the hopefuls that believes he goes back as Dick Whitman to an ad firm and does that famous Coke ad from 1976 we see at the end of the finale. I am not a subscriber to the theory (like some on the Internet have been) that he just went back to being the same old Don and that his epiphany/reawakening, whatever you want to call it was just him realizing he had idea to sell Coke to hippies. There is no way that's what is meant to be the take away here.


What do you all think about Don and how the finale of Mad Men went down?