Avatar, Onion and Banana Juice, and the Art of Letting Go

The best shows will always give the best advice. The statements left behind by a show's writers and creators will stick with us and guide our lives well after we've finished the final episode. And funny enough to me, these statements are almost always the most resounding and impactful... with children, or at least with stories made to be mostly consumed by children. Which I guess would kind of make sense, seeing as kids have the minds that most need development, the same development that doesn't stop until what some research now believes is your late-20s, but, if you're anything like me, your mind could use a little of that good ol' fashioned developing itself. And that's why, if you're anything like me, we shamelessly go back and watch all the shows considered by uppity snobs as "kid shows", which yes, are technically what they are but I personally would argue are actually so much more than that. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good and grizzly adult drama as much as the next guy, (Atlanta and House of Cards will hold always sacred spot in my heart) But I constantly find myself going back to to the shows that taught me so much as a child. To me, these shows are unaltered and unbiased ways of showing the untouched, pure nature of people, untainted by the negativity that the adult experience and gritty hardships of life may bring about. Ultimately, these shows just portray decisions in their purest form, usually against some kind of vile unsympathetic and symbolic enemy. They're fun and powerful and heartfelt and on rare occasions have everything I love in a show, children's or adult. And on that very note, the very best show from my childhood that was also the very best at delivering such powerful messages, the types that will affect your life well after you finish that final episode, was a cartoon that aired for three seasons, or books, on Nickelodeon, created by Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko, called Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Michael Dante DiMartino (left) and Bryan Konietzko (right)

By the way, if you haven't heard yet, team Avatar is on it's way back. In Netflix form. In live-action. With the original creators. Probably in early to mid-2021, I'm very excited. Probably more on that in another post though.

So back on topic, Avatar: The Last Airbender was a groundbreaking show for western audiences due to it's anime-inspired artwork and Chinese-influenced settings, as well as its heavily east asian-inspired martial-arts styles littered throughout its amazing bending sequences, not to mention its vast array of worldly and ethnically inspired character designs. The show starts off following Aang, a giddy and hyperactive yet, surprisingly complex and at-conflict character, after he is found in an iceberg sunken deep in arctic waters in the south pole. From there he is found by Katara, the caring and motherly yet quick-tempered water-bender from the southern Water Tribe and Sokka, her stubborn and dense but always brave and hilarious older brother. From there, they set out on Appa (Aang's flying Bison monster) and travel the world. Their quest is to find a water-bending, earth-bending, and fire-bending teacher so Aang can master all four elements and defeat the fire nation that has effectively waged war on the rest of the world for the past 100 years. And then afterwards a ticking clock is added after Aang learns he has to face the fire lord Ozai at the end of the summer because Sozin's comet is coming and will give all the fire-benders insanely overpowered firebending... yadda yadda yadda, I'm explaining this too much. If you don't know the story by now then I don't know what to tell you, like why are you reading this and not watching this beautiful show right now. Like literally go watch it. Right now. I'm serious. It's great you'll love it. Anyways, for those of you who are still here, what I want to talk about is one of the coolest parts of the whole show, the final episode(s) from Book 2: Earth which was a double episode, respectively called The Guru and The Crossroads of Destiny. This hour-long event is by far the fondest and most special memory I have of the entire show, even including the amazing series finale from the next book. The reason is that even as a youngster in my jammies jumping on my parents couch every Friday at 8 to get my weekly avatar fix, I could tell that this "Kids Show" was tackling topics so heavy that it make's me, even now, want to sit-back and ponder life while sipping on some calming jasmine tea. And I'll explain why. In the first of these episodes, Aang travels alone to the Eastern Air temple in order to find the guru that can supposedly help him master the Avatar State, an ultimate trump card for an Avatar in battle that's triggered by an intense wave of emotions and acts as the culmination and storage of all the previous Avatar's bending strength, which is a lot. Overall, it's kinda just some pretty useful stuff for taking out overpowered bad guys like fire lords. When he arrives, Aang meets Guru Pathik, a spiritually enlightened nomad who was friends with Aang's late teacher Monk Gyatso. Aang shares a bowl of onion and banana juice with Pathik, (which even the animated sight of today is really enough to churn my stomach into cheese), and then Pathik goes on to explain chakra and the nature of these chakras, as this is the first Aang has ever heard of them. He creates a metaphor for Aang to understand. Simply by showing him a series of connected ponds, Pathik is able to convey to Aang the basic principles of the practice of ancient chakra cleansing. Each pond swirls like a whirlpool and is only slightly flowing into the pond next in the series, due to algae and sediment standing in its way and clogging the path. From this, Pathik explains to Aang that these spiraling pools of water are much like the spiraling pools of chakra inside of us, searching for a way to flow down the path, but blocked by the complications and hardships of life. He explains that if you are able to unblock these pathways in a particular order, your energy will flow and your spirit will become liberated, and, specifically for Aang, mastery of the powerful Avatar State will become attainable. However to do this, one must come to terms with all the "emotional muck" occurring in one's own life. Essentially, you must understand, address, and then accept whatever is holding you back from your spiritual freedom and inner peace.

The avatar state: what goes from an enraged state of power to an enlightened state of control throughout an avatars life.

Now, the different emotional aspects this "muck" falls into, can be in one of seven different categories, or chakras. Also P.S, chakra cleansing is a real thing in many Asian and mainly Indian cultures spanning from the philosophical to religious and I highly recommend you read up on it, but, simply for our purposes here, we'll just keep it fictional and stick with the show's context. So in the world of Avatar these various pools are: the earth chakra which deals with survival and is blocked by fear; the water chakra which deals with pleasure and is blocked by guilt; the fire chakra which deals with willpower and is blocked by shame; the air chakra which deals with love and is blocked by grief; the sound chakra which deals with truth and is blocked by lies; the light chakra which deals with insight and is blocked by illusion (he references the division of race and nationality as being an illusion just for an example and food for thought hehe); and the thought chakra which deals with pure cosmic energy and is blocked by earthly attachment. Out of all these the most interesting to me is this final stage here, the thought chakra, so that's what I'll be discussing. Now I want to make this crystal clear, pure cosmic energy does not mean you're going to get superpowers. However, what it will do is allow you to have healthy relationships not based within dependence or attachment, as is a misconception about love, as is conveyed. Pathik teaches that love based on dependence is not love, it is simply a survival mechanism that has instilled in you the belief that you cannot survive without this thing or person. In order to combat this, you must instead give up these attachments in order to erase one's own ego, strengthening your spirit in the process. "Let it all flow down the river, forgotten" Pathik says. Now, I love this line and I do think it works, however, he may have spoke here in a way that Aang, being a child, could not have understood. When he says "forgotten", he does not necessarily mean that you have to rid yourself of all contact with this particular thing or person, only that you must rid yourself of the bond that ties you together and ultimately keeps you spiritually grounded. Aang's ultimate lesson here is that, given the choice between his love interest Katara and the world, he being the Avatar cannot choose Katara because his duty is ultimately to the world, and not a single person. He must be bonded to everyone... and therefore no one. It's a difficult concept to wrap your head around, especially in a world society that is increasingly pushing more and more earthly attachments onto us from our work to our romantic partners to our phones to our NBA2k MyCareer profiles, god forbid any addictive harmful substances or practices. Unlike MyCareer. But basically what Pathik is trying to get Aang to become here is a servant of the world, which is admittedly kind of a big thing to ask of a 12 year old kid. But it is a decision, and a decision that some people do indeed feel compelled to make.

BUT, in the contrast to everything I said prior to right now, I need to say this. Because it's important. Probably just as or even more important than everything I've said up until this point. Not all of us are the Avatar, nor a superhero, nor devoted servants to the world and its people, even as much as our fantastical minds may think. Because we do have families, we do have romantic partners, and we do have friends that will last and even transcend lifetimes simply because we are people, and all of those things are good. And what we even learn later in the show is that loneliness is never the price to pay for power and influence. So, while Pathik was indeed a wise man, the kind and caring uncle Iroh was even wiser still. Later this episode, while he and aang were walking in the tunnel underneath the palace at ba-sing-se, after Aang fled the eastern air temple to rescue his future-wife Katara, he gave aang some words of advice. "Perfection and power are overrated," he said. "I think you are very wise to choose happiness and love." So ultimately, the message from this amazing episode morphed from the formula to power from spirtual freedom into, "while you should strive to unlock your hidden potential to protect the ones you love, if that same potential is only unlocked after you've rid yourself of everyone that you love in order to achieve it, in the end it can't be worth it." And also, Uncle Iroh is the guy. So in essence, the show tells us that the duality of power and love are constantly balancing on the scale of life, and that you are ultimately the one that dictates that balance.

To end off, I want to leave on this little note, because sometimes we struggle with the occasionally important action of letting go and it's possible you might've been struggling with it too and maybe we can get a little empathy going on or something. Being able to let go is a talent, even one that some people sadly never learn their entire life. It saps their happiness, their spirit, and their freedom away like a cosmic energy sucking vacuum cleaner and in its place leaves trauma, bitterness, and ultimate despair and unhappiness. Like all talents, letting go needs to be practiced and honed, so what I propose to you the reader is a challenge. After finishing with this, look at yourself, your attachments, your dependence, and all your unhealthy bonds (emphasis on unhealthy) and mediate on them guru style and afterwards slowly, over time... try to let them all flow down the river. It might just change your life, and/or make your arrow tattoos light up all awesome-like. And try some onion and banana juice that might help too. Anyways that's gonna be all for now, thank you so much for reading, and until next time.