The key to life has not been discovered, and I would not think that it ever will be.
But for now, all we need to know is that the balance of work and play is important to surviving.
A child desires what is best for him because he is wise. A child knows nothing of discrimination or hatred and so he loves what is good to him. The little boy loves ice cream just as the little girl does, and any child loves a person who is kind to him. It is the responsibility of the elder to know and to do what is going to be best for the child in the future, because the child needs do nothing more than live in the moment.
That is a lesson many of us could afford to remember.
Take Aang, for instance. All of the monks of the temple consider themselves to be his guardians, but few are concerned with his well being. More are worried for what he can—or should I say, what he must do for the world.
Aang may be the avatar, but he is also a child. He needs to play and to live in the moment, just as any child does. He is wise and he knows this, but it is the fault of others that he cannot act on it. The other children neglect and outcast him, and the other monks attempt to force studies and labor on him.
I do neither, because I know that as a child, he must learn to get his butt kicked at games just as much as he must learn to Airbend properly.
Oh, but listen to me praise myself. I am not an arrogant man. I do not mean to place myself above others. It is only what I have seen that makes me say these things.
I went to comfort Aang, after all, and to tell him that he was accepted by me if not the others. I meant not to make myself look good to him, but to make him feel as though he had somewhere to turn and someone to rely on when times became too difficult.
I suppose I was a little bit too late.
He was already gone when I arrived, and it would not shock you to hear that I was afraid. The avatar should not have been running around on his own without proper training, especially at such a young age. Aang was suffering in his mind and in his heart. He was not ready to be the avatar, and he was not ready to be called different by boys he thought to be his friends.
I wonder where he went. I suppose if anyone knew he was the avatar, it would be the Fire Nation, and they would capture him. I would hear about something that drastic. But it is encroaching upon the rainy season, and I would not be surprised to see great storms coming about. Aang would be in danger, riding on the flying bison of his.
A great part of me wants to leave the temple and search for him. I wish to play his guardian, his father, in a sense, and protect him from hard. But another part of me says that if I did run after him, I would only bring him back, and he would be miserable without friends. Not only without friends, but seeing the boys who used to be his friends pretending he did not exist.
A father, or even the father figure I pretend to be, could not force that on his son. Or even the pretend son that I think of Aang as.
I could not crush the last remains of that breaking spirit. So I will protect my pretend son the way that I think is best: by letting him go off on his own to be the avatar.
I only hope it is not too great of a mistake.
