This is the life of a Bender.
So I've been told.
I am to conceal myself and under absolutely no circumstances may I fight for what is right. I must hide my talents from the Fire Nation, who may appear at any moment and seek out Earthbenders. If I escape the village for any time, it must only be to gather food or supplies. If anyone is to see me Earthbend, I am to run from him and make sure he does not follow me back to the village.
But this should be the life of no man.
A Bender is nothing if not a man.
This is the life of no Bender.
When the Avatar and his friends visited our humble town, I saw a Bender living life the way it should be led. The Waterbender Katara was happy to be alive, happy to be who she was, happy to be a Bender. She was happy with her life.
I am not happy to be alive, nor am I happy to be a Bender, nor am I happy with my life.
I do not wish for death. That is the path of a true coward. But to live in this manner, as nothing but a tool kept hidden in the shadows, is no life for me. I am not truly happy if I cannot Bend, and I cannot truly Bend as long as the Fire Nation occupies our shores, and I hate my life when I cannot Bend and be happy.
So I live out a life of loathing and bitterness, letting it fester in my heart until the day the Fire Nation is no more.
I will live to see the Fire Nation's demise. I am sure of it. For I have faith in the Avatar, and I have faith in the forces trying to stop the Fire Nation. I will not call those forces "good," because who is to say what is good and what is not? Who is to call the Fire Nation "evil"? Would that be because they are ruthless in attaining their goals? So am I, though… Am I a force of evil?
I would like to think that I am not.
I practice the illegal art of Earthbending amidst the unfair and brutal Fire Navy's reign, but I am not evil. I am trying to do what is right for my people and myself.
Though I suppose, as I stop to reconsider, that I am doing more to help myself than I am to help my village.
As is clear, Earthbending is not allowed, especially in the village. My practicing it in the wilderness, never to work it at home, is not helping my people in any way. Yet I promise myself that I would not risk endangering myself and thereby, my mother, with my skills. Even in secret—especially in secret—how can my Earthbending do anything but risk harming myself or my mother? She is old, frail, and strong-minded. She depends on me to support her and I cannot disappoint.
Is that what I am doing? Unintentionally harming my mother as I selfishly try to perfect my artistry?
But I am an Earthbender! No one can expect me not to Earthbend. That much was made clear by the Waterbender Katara. She was strong-minded and strong-willed, stronger than I, and willing to rise up against the Fire Navy even with no support from us, the cowards of the Earth Temple. Even without the support of her brother, the warrior Sokka, or her friend, the Avatar Aang, she rallied against the Fire Navy and tried to gain our trust.
She failed…but at no fault of her own.
We of the Earth Temple were weak.
I do not entirely know why we did help her, in the end. We did not suddenly gain the courage of ten thousand men, nor did we see any sort of light. We were only…encouraged? No, we were not encouraged to come to her aid. We were shamed. Shamed by our weakness, shamed that we had brought that weakness on ourselves.
Shamefully, we helped the Waterbender Katara.
Selfishly, we tried to purge ourselves of that shame.
Greedily, we drank up our success and called ourselves pure.
No single victory can extricate from us that horrible weakness, that submissive defeat.
We will carry with us, for the rest of our lives, the fact that we could have used the ship's fueling coal to Earthbend, and we would have saved the Waterbender Katara and her companions the trouble of liberating us. But we were not clever. We were not clearheaded or observant.
We did not attempt to win our freedom, so we forced a young girl and her friends to do it for us.
I would like to say it is all the Fire Nation's fault for putting us in such a position in the first place, but I cannot lie. I was weak, and in my moments of weakness, I turned to any help I could find.
Such is the life of a Bender.
