Avatar's Pain

I have been thinking about writing this since the Super Bowl, but it wasn't until I saw the movie Avatar that it was clear why.  If you haven't seen it, it is about people who transform themselves into another life form, and live on a distant planet much like Earth, to learn about the native's culture, so that they can excavate their energy source and bring it back to Earth.  The main character goes through a process of becoming more and more like the natives, and eventually decides to stay.

But that is not the pain part I am talking about, the pain of learning a new language, and culture, and way of life.  I'm talking about the pain of seeing your hometown on TV when your reality is something completely different.


I had kind of ignored the hype about the Saints.  In fact I fought against it tooth and nail, because the last thing I want to see when I am going through one of the worst Iowa winters in history, is people in New Orleans standing outside in a hoodie in the winter.  I don't think it was just that, though.  I didn't really believe it was going to happen, that they were going to play in the Super Bowl.  Indianapolis is so close to here too, so there was absolutely no Saints hype here like there was in New Orleans.

And then it started happening, they kept winning, and the big game was getting closer and closer.  These ads for the Super Bowl kept popping up on our TV screen.  There were the Saints, symbol of New Orleans, in my face, every day, every hour, almost every minute it seemed.  Not only were there pictures of the Saints, but there were shots of the city, Jackson Square, the food, the people, the River, everything.

What most people don't understand, is once you've lived in New Orleans, it stays with you wherever you go.  The images are in your head.  I had conveniently stored them away to look at later, or show my kids, or just forget about for a while so that I could get on with my life in Iowa, which by the way is very good except for the zero degree weather.

I liked the images I was seeing, the glittery snow, the way winter makes everything quiet and still.  The way snow covers everything with a blanket- not a warm one, but a very pretty one.  I think winter provides people with a way to take a break from life, retreat into your "cave", look inside, and decide what you like and don't like, and in the Spring you can make whatever changes you want to make.  I was falling in love with Winter.

Every time an image would come up from New Orleans, it was like ripping off a band-aid.  I'd start to miss the warmth of winter there.  60s in January isn't bad at all.  I missed the food.  I missed my family.  I even missed my old house.  And the images just kept coming.  Rip, rip, rip, rip, rip.  Ouch.

I'm reading the Not So Big Life, and she asks: "How do you know that things are the way you've been taught to believe they are?  What would convince you otherwise?"

It is an interesting question, because when you move, or at least make as big a move as we did, your whole reality changes.  Nothing is the way you were brought up, everything you grew up believing is challenged and turned upside down.  It snows when it should be raining.  It's cold when it should be hot.  The people around you tell you like it is "straight up" instead of sugar coating it.  There's not nearly as much poverty.  People care about their kids and their community and their environment and want to make it progressively better.  The food is different, smells are different, sights, and sounds are different.  It is a completely different sensory experience.  And you start to look at your old hometown through a different lens.

Which is how this relates to Avatar.  He keeps going back into his human body, his legs are paralyzed and he is in a wheelchair.  That's how I feel it would be if I went back to my old life.  Things have changed so much, and I have changed so much, that I don't even recognize my old self anymore and wouldn't want to put myself in her situation any more than the main character wants to be in a body whose legs don't work.

I've embraced this place where we live wholeheartedly.  And that's Avatar's pain, realizing that he can never really go back to his old life, because he has changed too much and been integrated into something bigger than himself- a whole new world, literally.