CAN BATMAN BE ANYBODY?

Quoting Batman in my last blog seems to have struck a chord with a few of my younger readers.

My interest in all things Caped Crusader goes back over forty years thanks to my brother-in-law Tommy, a mentally challenged fifty nine year old who lives with cerebral palsy and a rare genetic condition called Prader-Willi syndrome. Though he can’t read, he loves looking at the pictures in Batman comics.

Whenever we drop in on Tommy at his nursing home in Maple, he seems to be watching a Batman movie. Lately, it’s The Dark Knight Rises, his Christmas gift from Santa. Now that I’ve watched it twice, I realize the movie has an important message that surfaces briefly amid scenes of violence and mayhem that dominate the screen.

As Bruce Wayne talks to Officer Blake in his cruiser, he reveals the real end game of the movie with the line,

“The idea was to be a symbol. Batman could be anybody, that was the point.”

Can Batman be anybody? Can Batman be you and me? Can we rise above our own limitations to help save the world?

A real life super hero, Nelson Mandela, speaks to these questions in his inaugural speech as President of South Africa on May 10, 1994 when he said,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You’re playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us, it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Certainly, fighting cancer can be a time of fear. However, unlike competition and compassion, I’m learning that fear and courage are not mutually exclusive. I also realize that playing small is usually comfortable and self serving while lighting the way for others by our words and actions can only help make Gotham City a better place for all.

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.

And his father’s voice replied to him,

“That is the only time a man can be brave.”

 

Bran speaking to his father Eddard Stark

in Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin