9 Life Lessons From Avatar the Last Airbender

There aren’t many shows that you could develop an entire life philosophy from. But Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) is one of them.

While philosophy and life lessons may seem like hard-to-tackle topics for a “kids show,” I think ATLA’s willingness to take on the subject matter is exactly what made, and makes, the show so successful. They filled the gap in the American TV show market for content that teaches children meaningful lessons through impactful stories.

And unlike most kids’ TV shows, ATLA doesn’t paint a picture of a world filled with sunshine and roses. The show’s reality, much like ours, is full of terrible things—including war, imperialism, and genocide.

But the beauty of the series is not that it merely exposes what’s wrong with the world. ATLA empowers its viewers to believe that they have the capacity to face the ills of reality, not with imaginary bending, but with wisdom, empathy, humility, and internal strength.

Empathy

When Aang wakes up from the iceberg, he finds himself in a world full of divides. The fire nation thinks that they’re better than all the other nations. The other nations despise the Fire Nation for their imperialist actions.

Initially, it’s hard not to hate the Fire Nation. They’ve burned down villages, destroyed families, and wrecked the environment. Understandably, the main characters — especially Sokka — despise every Fire Nation citizen. They believe that they would never do the gruesome things that the Fire Nation citizens have done if they were in their shoes.

But, as the series progresses, ATLA tries to slowly chip away at the belief that all Fire Nation citizens are evil, partly through the story of Zuko.

Zuko has an incredibly tough childhood. He loses his mother. He is severely burned by his father. And he is banished from his home country, forced to pursue the Avatar.

However, it is clear that there is good inside of Zuko. As a kid, he stands up for the soldiers that his father wants to use as sacrificial pawns in his quest for world domination. Sadly, this good is suppressed because of his unenviable upbringing that leads him to become overtaken by hate and anger.

Midway through season 3, though, Zuko goes through a transformation. His Uncle — who may be best archetype of a wise man in TV history — continually shows his nephew the love and empathy that he deserves (this reuniting scene is particularly heart-warming).

Eventually, Zuko reflects on his life and begins to realize what he truly wants: to help the Avatar bring balance back to the world.

But at first, the gang doesn’t want him to join the group. They only see Zuko for what he’s done to them in their past. Toph, however, goes a bit deeper.

She empathizes with Zuko and his troubled childhood and wants to give him the opportunity to help. Her empathy, along with Zuko’s display of courage against against the Combustion Man, shows the group he deserves a second chance.

Much like ATLA, our world has similar divides. Urban from rural. Republican from Democrat. American from foreigner. It’s so easy to fall into the mindset that we would never believe the things that our “enemies” do if we were in their shoes. But, ATLA shows us that simply is not true. We’re all a product of our upbringing and our environments, often more than we care to believe.

Though it’s difficult, we must all make the effort to deeply empathize with one others’ backgrounds and try to understand that most people are the way they are because of things that are largely out of their control. Only then can we begin to break down these divides and build a united world.

Finding Your Path in Life: Reflecting on What You Want

Life is full of people and societal pressures that will try to tell you what your life path should be.

Your parents may want you become a doctor.

Your culture may tell you that shouldn’t try out for sports because you’re a girl.

Your friends may pressure you to bully an outcast.

You can live your life at the whim of these pressures from others, but Avatar tries to tell us that life is much more rewarding when you follow your own path.

Zuko spends years trying to capture the Avatar to please his father and be welcomed back to the fire nation. However, when he finally gets what he thought he wanted, he finds that he feels emptier and angrier than ever. It’s only when he follows the wisdom of his Uncle and reflects on his internal motivations and past that he is able to find his own path.

Finding Your Path: Life is a River

“If a fish lives his whole life in this river, does he know the river’s destiny? No. Only that it runs on and on and on. Out of his control. He may follow where it flows, but he cannot see the end. He cannot imagine the ocean.” ~Jeong Jeong, Book 1, Episode 16

It’s compelling to believe that we can know what our destiny should be. That we’ll be happy once we have a certain job, a new house, or a doting spouse. But the world isn’t so simple.

“Destiny is a funny thing. You never know how things are going to work out. But if you keep an open mind and an open heart, I promise you will find your own destiny.” Uncle Iroh, Book 3, Episode 12

Like a fish that lives its whole life in a river, we can never imagine where our life will lead us. We cannot imagine the ocean. Our only choice is to follow our internal compass and keep an open mind at every step of the way.

Pride and Honor

Pride is a funny thing. We all should be proud of who we are, but like anything, too much of it throws us out of balance.

Avatar shows us that a life driven only by pride can lead to the exact thing that we want to avoid: shame. For most of his life, Zuko believes that he can escape his shame by telling himself that he’s full of pride. But as Uncle Iroh says, “pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.”

When we have found the balance between humility and pride, the series suggests that we will find honor, pride’s more fulfilling cousin.

This path to honor does not fall into the typical view we may have of honor, though. True honor is earned by the strength of our character. Not by our family heritage. And certainly not by living up to someone else’s vision of who we should be.

Inner Strength: Never Abandon Hope

No matter your life path, you will face external and internal hardships. How you deal with these hardships is everything.

Similar to the Shawshank Redemption, ATLA tries to inspire us to find hope even in the darkest of times.

When Uncle Iroh is locked in prison, seemingly doomed to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell, he finds a way to never give in to despiar. He works his ass off training inside his cell, similar to Andy Dufresne chipping away at his wall.

Eventually, he uses his newfound strength and seizes the opportunity to escape and go help the White Lotus free Ba Sing Se from the grips of the Fire Nation. We must all find these pockets of hope in the darkest times if we are are to maintain our humanity.

“You must never give in to despair. If you allow yourself to slip down that road you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times hope is something that you give to yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.” ~Uncle Iroh, Book 2, Episode 5

Inner Strength Doesn’t Mean Avoiding Your Feelings

While the gang is trying to escape the sinking library of Wan Shi Tong in season 2, Aang’s flying bison Appa is taken by sand benders. For much of the next several episodes, Aang tries to remain “strong” by refusing to acknowledge how much the loss of his Appa bothers him.

But suppressing his feelings causes the typically cool-headed Aang to lash out at his friends. He even yells at his love interest Katara.

These episodes show us that being strong doesn’t mean avoiding your feelings, it means you have the strength to feel them and do what you know is right, regardless. After learning this lesson, Aang lets himself feel the sting of loss for Appa, and he uses this feeling to stay motivated to find his lost friend.

Balancing Knowledge and Perspectives

“It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If we take it from only one place it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations will help you become whole.”

Uncle Iroh provides some incredible nuggets of wisdom throughout the show, but this quote may be his most valuable advice. This excerpt is from a scene where Iroh is trying to teach Zuko the difficult skill of redirecting lightning.

Uncle Iroh learned this technique not from a fire-bender, but by studying the movements of the water tribe. He teaches Zuko that to truly master the element of fire, he has to do more than study fire-bending. He must learn from other benders and their unique techniques if he is to become a genuine master.

So many of us get stuck in a fixed view of the world. We develop fixed views of politics. Fixed views of culture. We’ve even become fixed into narrower and narrower specializations in our careers.

Uncle Iroh’s wisdom is the antidote to this trend. To become true masters of our own skillsets, and masters of life, we must take knowledge from a diverse set of sources.

We must learn from people with different life experiences, especially when they seem to be our opposite. Democrats from Republicans. Whites from Blacks. Software engineers from psychologists. Christians from Buddhists.

Learning and incorporating knowledge from a diverse set of life experiences is the only way we can achieve our own internal balance, and become whole again.

Learning from Nature

As Katara says in the show’s intro, “Aang’s got a lot to learn if he’s going to save anyone.”

And just as Uncle Iroh prescribes, Aang gets his knowledge from a great diversity of places. He learns from the world’s most skilled benders. He visits a library that contains the sum of all human knowledge. Aang even spends a couple of days learning from a guru.

But despite all these sources of knowledge, the lesson he learns to defeat the Fire Lord comes not from a human, but a giant Lion Turtle.

As a biomimic — someone who tries to solve human problems by learning from nature — I couldn’t help but include this lesson. Nature has spent 3.8 billion years “researching and developing” solutions to almost every problem we can think of. As Janine Benyus likes to say, “failures are fossils, and what surrounds is the secret to survival.”

Similar to how Aang learns his most valuable lesson from a Lion Turtle, the most valuable lessons that we can learn to restore environmental balance come not from humans, but from nature.

The Interdependence of life

“See, this whole swamp is actually just one tree spread out over miles. Branches spread and sink, take root, and spread some more. One big living organism, just like the entire world… We are all living together, even if most folks don’t act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree.” Huu, Book 2, Episode 4

This quote may be my favorite line of the entire series. Whether we can see it or not, all life is connected in an amazing web of interactions that transcends time and space.

The air you breathe is recycled by trees throughout the world. The water you drink is filtered by countless algae, invertebrates, and plants. And the carbon and nutrients in your food was at some point a part of a dinosaur.

Just like the elements, positive actions can also flow throughout the world. But unlike the elements, positive actions aren’t zero-sum. When we perform good deeds, the actions can cause a ripple effect. But when we do bad, those actions also spread. And the entire world, including ourselves, suffers.

You can’t separate your actions from the world any more than a tree can separate itself from the forest. Realizing this can lead us to understand what’s known as “enlightened self-interest,” which states that there is no separating the interests of a group from its members.

Or, as Marcus Aurelius once said, “That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.”

And once you realize that humans exist in a web of interaction not only with other humans, but all of life, you also begin to realize that there is no such thing that is good for humans, which is not good for all life.

Conclusion

Although the real world doesn’t face as clear of a threat as the Fire Nation attacking, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t real issues that need to be addressed — corruption, climate change, political divides, racism, sexism.

But with how big the world is, it can be tough to believe that we have any power as individuals.

Avatar the Last Airbender shows us that despite the scale of our world’s issues, we all have a role to play in solving them.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re a short, blind girl. An old man with regrets. Or a goofy kid with arrow tattoos.

But, just like Aang, we’ve all got a lot to learn if we’re going to save anyone.