I don’t want to spoil the ending to The Dark Night Rises, but I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the conclusion to the Batman trilogy.
Like many of you, I was fearful of going to see the movie after the horrific tragedy in Aurora, Colorado.
However, I ultimately decided to go to the movies and watch the conclusion to my favorite superhero franchise alone.
After the first hour or so, I felt myself arguing with the plot of the movie because I’ve never believed in dichotomies like good vs. evil or even Republican vs. Democrat.
In fact, watching the world of the Dark Night unfold — one of lawlessness and anarchy — made me reflect a lot on myself and the world that we live in.
On the surface, the lawlessness of Gotham City is caused by those fed up with the corruption of Wall Street and with the deception of those in power.
But, as you dig deeper into the plot, you’ll find that pure evil does not exist only within the vigilante represented by the character of Bane.
Pure evil, if such a thing even exists, exists within all of us.
The Dark Night Rises reminded me that good and evil cannot exist separately from one another because they are two sides of the same coin.
Like the beauty and ugliness of both sides of Harvey Dent’s face, our lives are more complex and connected than many of us want to admit.
Despite our pains and our fears, I believe that every person has the potential to reconcile those tendencies found within both Batman and Bane.
Because in the end, the Commissioner Gordon’s, the Catwoman’s and even the Jokers of the world are not as opposite as we may want to believe.
In fact, I’m sorry to let you down, but the darkness of our Gotham City lays not so much in choosing between Batman or Bane, but in accepting both.
The wretchedness of our world that is so magnificently depicted in the movie is not simply the fault of mercenaries but of mindsets.
And the problems that we face, like those in The Dark Night Rises, are not the fault of the poor, but of the conditions that make all of us poor.
So don’t wait until the end of the world to start crossing that bridge that starts with us embracing those who we label as our enemies.
Walk towards those bullets manufactured in our minds and confront the fear that says that we’re different from those who we may not understand.
Learn to accept our contradictions and embrace the fact that our love of others can only be measured by how much we truly love ourselves.
Mike de la Rocha is an LA-based musician, writer and co-founder of shopsharelove.com. To find out more about Mike visit mikedelarocha.com and follow him on Twitter at @mrmikedelarocha.
