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❌Warning: Avatar film (2009) spoilers up ahead ❌

The human race is at its peak of technological development. Our desire for convenience is what drives the pursuit of technology. Back in the 90's, people used to wait for weeks to receive letters and telegrams from their loved ones from far away. Now, no matter where we are, may they be in the opposite side of the world, we can readily communicate with our loved ones in seconds through a a quick chat or text message. When in the 90's, students back then would spend more time in libraries and fight for textbooks they solely need to borrow to aid their studying. Now, students spend less time in libraries, and more time in cafes or anywhere with sufficient internet signal to look up resources from the internet to aid their studying.

Information highway now is more broad and accessible to everyone than it was 30 years ago. Communication now is less stringent than it was back then, or is it?

These advancements are supposed to improve one's quality of life, but like all things, there are downsides to it too.

One downside of technology is that it creates an avenue for scrutiny and envy (and sometimes regret). "You know that girl you knew in high school who won in that pageant? She's having a baby now and she hasn't even finished school. Ha!" "You know that girl you studied in law school with? She just topped the bar exams you flunked." "You know that guy you friend-zoned years ago because he was too fat? He's posting pictures of himself in his toned body with his girlfriend now" "You know your ex who you broke up with years ago? He's going to get married now", and so on.

We know for a fact that virtuality doesn't often reflect reality. These can be seen in stories of couples who avidly post successive photos of themselves on their social media platforms do not reliably indicate a fulfilling relationship and much like how a bachelor's successive posts and pictures of their cars, and houses and their vacation getaways are not reliable indicators of the person's financial stability and health.

What is reliable however, are our own emotions. Envy in particular, is an indicator of discontent and ungratefulness, while scrutiny is an indicator of entitlement, pride and self-righteousness. Both are indicators of spiritually unevolved beings. While social media can be an avenue of circulating information and wholesome content, it also enables thought patterns governed by lack of gratefulness, humility and compassion which surfaces as destructive habits.

Fine Rox. You have a point. Most people don't know how to be content and be happy for themselves. So what?

My point is, people are acting like this, because they are rejecting their essence. They are rejecting self-love -- their love for their N'Goa.

Spoiler alert: I'll be using Avatar references from time to time to make this article interesting from here on out. Shout out to the pastor who thought of this during that Sunday talk to make things more interesting. You're a genius!

For all the Christians reading this right now, Acts 17:26 says "If you don't love the way God created you (or how you are created), you will never find purpose in your life." and this speaks volumes for those who suffer every day from disorders and impairments. You need to appreciate who you are as a whole. A person without limbs can still have a purpose in this world and live an awesome life. In case you want an example, I came prepared.

Nick Vujicic was born without limbs. Most people could not imagine being unable to run around and play with their friends growing up or write or sketch or even type, especially without limbs or hands. Imagine the difficulty this guy had to go through. I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges here, as I am aware that people experience pain differently and we should never compare our scars with each other and how we deal with it, or else we'll just go around in circles playing the game of "who had it worse?".

My only point is that Nick used what he had. He may not have had limbs, but he has a big heart and he turned his disability into a tool to reach out and touch the lives of people and empathize with them, especially those who feel like social outcasts every single day.

And this guy didn't do it with a "feeling sorry for himself" mindset, just so you know. Despite being diagnosed with depression at an early age, he fought through it and kept winning through all his battles because he knew who he was and embraced it.

Like Nick, maybe you also find yourself wishing to be someone else, maybe someone smarter, or less damaged, or prettier, or someone more normal (even though normal is only an illusion driven by social constructs), or maybe you want to have limbs, or be able to walk, or you want to be someone who can get out of bed instead of being tied to an oxygen machine every single day, but maybe, instead of looking at what you lack, maybe, you should start looking at what you have. Look at the things you're good at, the things that make you feel good about yourself and other people.

Maybe all of us should start appreciating and improving our good qualities while loving ourselves and improving how we handle the bad ones.

= = =

Another downside of being continuously connected in the digital world is continuous partial attention (CPA) or giving partial attention simultaneously. This is different from multitasking as multitasking is done for the purpose of increasing productivity. CPA is just obsession with being connected to the hyper world, and it's making all of us sick. How?

Because we are not connected anymore with our environment. We're losing our Tsaheylu.

One event that I've experienced to confirm this is, while I was at home, my mom uses the messenger app when to call my brothers and I for a family prayer. How, instead of calling us by our names through our relatively non-soundproof walls, she would just simply chat in messenger , because she knew we would just be looking at our computer screens and isolate ourselves through our earphones the majority of the time in the house anyway, and raising her voice through the walls would take more energy and be less effective than the latter.

Extrapolating this sample data with the number of households with internet connection in our country and eventually the whole world, we come to a scary conclusion that we are all replacing genuine human interaction with digital screen time.

Our obsession these days with taking pictures of our meals and placing them on Instagram, while waiting for other people online to "heart" our pictures, are replacing genuine moments where we actually enjoy our meals and conversations with people that go with them. Not only does hyperconnectivity lowers productivity and sensitivity, but reel time also takes away real life. These days, instead of engaging and being fully present with our loved ones, our minds are off somewhere else in the digital world scanning and interacting with people who are miles away. This leads to too much stress that will lead to paranoia, and will eventually take a toll on our health and overall well-being.

In our "highly civilized" society, we say "Hello, how are you?" but don't really mean it, and even though we are already carrying a lot of emotional baggage, we still reply with an "I'm fine. How are you?" and don't really mean it either.

The Na'vi in the movie Avatar greets one another by stopping everything they were doing and greet each other with "I see you". This was inspired by North African tribes people who greet each other with "Sawu Bona" which had the same meaning. Going beyond the surface of this greeting, it means that "I'm stopping everything I'm doing at the moment to acknowledge your presence. I see you as another person, another soul going through life. I feel your energy. I feel you carrying the weight of the baggage life put on you, and here you are surviving and having something to say. I see you."

People are so afraid of being vulnerable and real these days that we deprive ourselves from the one thing that could save us -- genuine human connection. Instead, most people would rather engage with the "fake it til you make it" lifestyle. The more we deprive ourselves of having a connection that we crave for, the more we become distant from each other, the more isolated we become, the more helpless we feel with everything going on in our lives.

Examine yourself right now. When was the last time you engaged in a meaningful conversation with another person? Whether or not you think that they're too young or too seasoned for dense conversations, it doesn't matter, because most grown ups these days don't even possess adequate manners, sincerity and enthusiasm that most children have. When was the last time you actually tried to get to know a person, despite the judgments you hear about them, despite the judgments you create in your head, despite what you see on social media? When was the last time you were fully present in an event that made you feel glad you are alive, for witnessing it or for being a part of it?
When was the last time you actually lived?

= = =

Neytiri: "Now choose your ikran. This you must feel inside you. If he also chooses you, move quick like I showed you. You only have one chance, Jake."

Jake Sulley: "How will I know if it chooses me?"

Neytiri: "He will try to kill you."

Jake Sulley: "Outstanding"

If any of you do not know what an ikran is, an ikran from the movie Avatar, is a mountain banshee -- a large, carnivorous, aerial, dinosaur-like creatures. In the process of becoming an Ikran Makto (Banshee Rider), the Na'vi individual must undergo a potentially life-threatening rite of passage. The Na'vi is led up to the Banshee Rookery in the Hallelujah Mountains where the largest breed of ikran resides, and the individual is tasked to choose an ikran. The person will know that the ikran chooses him when it tries to kill him. If the individual survives and successfully manages to ride a banshee, the ikran will be his forever as the bond between the ikran and the rider lasts a lifetime and this bond cannot be made anymore with other riders [1].

I would not recommend anyone reading this right now to do anything potentially life-threatening such as taming a flying dinosaur-like creature or any wild animal without any proper training. But one thing we can get out of this, especially when we plan to take some screen time off and do something meaningful for once, is that we need to get out of our comfort zones. Take risks and find your true calling, just like the way Jake was placed himself in harm's way to obtain his ikran. The ikran revealed itself as something that could potentially kill him, but that didn't stop him. I'm not saying that we should deliberately put ourselves in harm's way to find our calling (or at least, not to a life-threatening degree), all I'm saying is, we should not be afraid to take risks.

Take risks, embrace discomfort if it means try new things to help you get to know yourself better: enter that sketching class you've always wanted to enroll in, take pole dancing lessons, join that Sunday service you've always wanted to go to (no one is going to judge you), sign up for gym training etc. Know what moves you and what gives you meaning. Do something you're scared of doing and be honest with yourself. Find your ikran, and you will know it's your ikran as it will find you too, but that doesn't mean you should stop looking.

As Twyla Tharp said:

"Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable."

= = =

In the middle of the movie, Jake Sully had been socially rejected by the Omaticaya for hiding the true intentions of the RDA. In order to gain their respect back, Jake Sully found and rode the great mountain banshee (toruk), and became a Toruk Makto (great mountain banshee rider). Prior Jake, there had only been five Toruk Maktos and they were spoken of with great respect and honor. The last Toruk Makto before Jake was Neytiri's great-great-grandfather who had used the great respect given to such riders to unite Na'vi clans during the "time of great sorrow".

In the movie, Jake Sully did the same thing.

Most people underestimate the power of masses and collective consciousness. However, if we look at what's going on in our planet, our consciousness has often been reflected by the state of the world. Global warming, deforestation, extinction of certain species, pollution, discrimination, stigma, war, poverty are not something we should smile about. But it's a small list reflecting the reality of how divided we are as a specie and how terrible we are as caretakers of the planet.

The equilibrium has shifted to the extent where it is difficult to revert back to when the planet was still sustainable and its resources were abundant and untainted with human greed. I know that humans are machines designed to increase entropy, but we've allowed ourselves to way too much entropy increase and here we still are, 7 billion of us, still increasing, and most of us still bicker about these issues with an "us versus them" mindset instead of an "all of us versus the issue" mindset.

While it's brave to get off the couch and find our own calling and to discover ourselves in ways unimaginable, a time will come when we need to be the Toruk Makto in our own story. There will come a time when we need to unify people for our cause and what's important to us.

So surround yourself with your tribe. And who is your tribe? People you don't have to walk on eggshells on, but people who also push and encourage you to be better and braver. People who you can grow and change the world with, and inspire each other for the better. You don't have to pass the requirements to be a part of them, just show up. Just try. Just be there and be present. Who knows? Maybe you'll see a miracle at work in your life as well. 😁

Disclaimer:

The last two entries were mainly of my own interpretations as the speaker didn't have enough time to elaborate the last two during the talk.