Despite Iroh's potential as a great military general and heir to the Fire Nation throne, he choose to live simply and had a lot of simple pleasures. Tea, conversation, sharing wisdom, Pai Sho, music. He deeply understood the importance of transcending material possessions (for the most part; i.e. his White Lotus tile, his tsungi horn, etc) and ego and was more concerned with living a good life, having good experiences, and sharing wisdom. I consider him to be my top role model, not just for simple living, but for life in general.
Hagrid also had simple pleasures. Being with friends, studying magical creatures, a good drink, and helping out around Hogwarts. He also had a small yet cozy house that was just right for him and a good dog. His life has never been about gaining more. Hagrid's day to day life for the years before Harry Potter was taking really long walks around the grounds, maybe doing something important for Dumbledore, and taking care of the animals in the forest. Yeah he has a lot of stuff, but it's all useful to his line of work and aligns with his interests, which is something I think is ok when it comes to simple living.
Furthermore, who could live more simply in their respective world: a firebender in The Last Airbender world (before the modernization of Korra) or a wizard in the wizarding world (which is essentially our world plus all the magic)? A firebender could cover a lot of essentials (warmth, cooking, heat, travel via jet propulsion) while not living in a world full of electronics and social media and stuff. The wizarding world may seem busier with more structure, but a wizard has pretty much all the essentials covered. Housing, food, travel, health, etc. There's magic for pretty much everything.
Further-furthermore, which world is more simple in general? For the Avatar world, I'm only talking about the world during the time of the original series. For the wizarding world, I'm only talking about the magical aspects, not the muggle technology and problems that run parallel with it. Like I said before, the Avatar world is very primitive and doesn't have much technology outside of the Fire Nation military advancements. This makes it much quieter and more natural, but also lacks many conveniences we have today. The wizarding world can sometimes seem cluttered, but it will never have technological advancements like phones, computers, etc.
Submitted May 09, 2019 at 08:26PM by AppIeHill http://bit.ly/2JwW9J1
