Rose Henderson.  I like Rose.  The coolest thing about her has to be her enormous amount of faith.  If you remember earlier in the series, everyone thought the tail section of the plane was destroyed and everyone on it was dead, but Rose did not accept this fact.  She believed by faith that her husband, Bernard, was still alive, and sure enough, he was.  Rose was told at one point in her life that she only had two years left to live, and just after discovering this information, she met her husband, Bernard.  After she informed him of this, he did not care, and proposed to her.  He tried everything in his power to heal her, even going as far as a faith healer.  In fact, this faith healer, Isaac, that she visited, was in Australia, and told her that she couldn’t be healed by him, because her healing was meant to happen somewhere else.  It’s definitely not coincidence that her healing did happen, on the very island that they crashed on their way back from Australia.

If you remember, Rose was in a state of shock when they first arrived on the island, not talking for about three days straight.  But subsequent to that event, she handles life on the island very well.  Probably better than most of the other survivors.

If you remember the episode where Charlie was hung by a rope, Rose approached him and discussed his behavior, which was very similar to how she was when they first arrived on the island.  Of course, this attitude was due to the fact that Claire was missing.  She encouraged him by telling him that he basically needed to pray, and she ends up praying with him.  On that same day, she tells him that there is a fine line between denial, and faith, which was referring to her faith in Bernard still being alive.

It almost seems like Rose takes a mother position on the island many times, encouraging people and almost guiding them, but not directly.  Hurley trusted her about his thoughts on blowing up the food in the bunker.  We also see many other characters put faith in her and trust her.

We can learn from Rose that in life, it’s a great thing to have a positive attitude.  Pessimism is a very, very bad quality.  We see that Rose, had enormous amounts of not only faith, but also optimism, which helped her get through each day.  That’s something that can inspire us all.  If we are having a bad day, or even a bad week, month, or year, it’s better to look to the future, about how it will turn out, other than looking at how bad of a situation that we are in.  I guess as far as the concept of destiny and fate, Rose reminds me of John Locke.