I am The Dark Knight...

I should warn you. If you haven't seen The Dark Knight, and if you're pretty good at catching inferences, you might want to stop reading if you want to avoid some spoilers. As it stands, I'll do my best to stay as far away from them as I can, but a warning is still in order. Fair warning!

In our day to day lives, each of us is Lt. Jim Gordon. Simple guy, daily grind, working his ass off to do what he thinks is the right thing to be doing. In our own worlds, each of us is a good person, each of us is strong and moral, each of us can make light of situations, be serious, you probably get the picture. No one dislikes Jim Gordon, and if you do, well, you have some issues. He's the good guy, as I truly believe most of us want to be.

Problem is... in the movies at least, nothing really that bad happens to Jim Gordon. He witnesses things and so, from a safe distance, experiences the pain of others. He truly cares for the people that are hurt in the grinder that is Gotham City. And at the end of the day, when he kisses his wife hello and checks on his sleeping children, he breathes a sigh of relief at that safe distance.

The trouble, the dark truth of the matter, is that none of us get to STAY Jim Gordon. If it hasn't happened yet (please be thankful), it WILL happen. This isn't a blog about the impending doom on the horizon, though, so while I think it needs to be pointed out, stay with me and I will show you hope. Promise.

Something happens to our Jim Gordons. There is a moment of pain, or a long, endurance marathon of suffering, and we hurt from it. Maybe it's the loss of a loved one, or the destruction of a relationship, or a personal illness. It doesn't even have to be anything so terrible as these, maybe you lost your job, or maybe you're fighting with friends, or maybe you just did something you regret and don't know how to say you're sorry... the point is, you're wounded somehow. And every wound leaves a mark...

The Joker takes his scars, the things that he's suffered in his life, and he magnifies them. His pain will be THEIR pain, he paints over the suffering, but maybe as a means to hide it, or maybe to flaunt it. To make sure everyone knows what happened, or at least that something did. In his world the pain has taken all meaning from his actions and he lives only to hurt those who don't hurt as much as he does. His story constantly changes about HOW he got his scars, and this can be a defense mechanism, or it can represent those people who will ALWAYS find a reason to be hurting, a reason to be hurting other people, or a reason to NOT be doing the right thing, simply because life has been "unfair" to them. You become the Joker by choice and deed, both of which go hand in hand. It's easy to lash out at the world if you're hurting, but it makes you nothing but a cancer because you will simply reproduce your pain, over and over and over again, and onto the people closest to you, until it destroys everything around you.

Two-Face was driven by a need to do the right thing. "We either die a hero or we live long enough to become the villain." When he was faced with personal pain, tragedy, and suffering, when it disfigured him and ruined his "perfect image" of himself, he lashed out at those he saw who WEREN'T suffering like he was. Instead of rising above his pain, instead of mastering it, overcoming it, he chose to let his pain manipulate him into trying to drag everyone else around him down to his level. To me, he is like a drowning victim who no longer cares HOW they live, as long as they do, and they will literally pull someone who is trying to save them down below the water level if it means they can push upwards and steal another breath of air. Two-Face had great intentions, and as long as things went his way, he could accomplish great things. He was handsome, dashing, and charismatic... but only on the one side. When he faced REAL adversity... like the flip of the coin that he so tends to favor... he could really go either way.

Batman. Early on Batman's world of safety, comfort, and wealth was shattered. He had everything he could ever have wanted and was as happy as anyone could possibly be. His parents were killed in front of him. He watched them bleed to death from gunshot wounds. This represents, to me, the worst kinds of emotional suffering and pain that someone can be exposed to. This happened when he was most vulnerable, it happened suddenly and when the shock of it wore off, he was faced with the same exact choices that Joker and Two-Face had to make. How to react and deal with the introduction of pain and suffering and hardship to his life. Sure, his is a dark path, and he has moments of rage, and anguish, and despair, the same as you and I do when we are suffering. But unlike the other two examples, Batman took his pain, took his hardship, and he focused it, harnessed it, into something he could use to inspire other people, regardless of what had happened to him. And while he deals with his own pain in a rather unique way... it isn't the gadgets, it isn't the suit, or the car... it comes down to the simple choice he made to help others from what happened to him that makes him a hero, and makes the other two examples villains.

Batman is obviously my favorite hero and so I'm biased. There's a line in "Batman Begins" where Gordon says something along the lines of "I don't know how to thank you", and Batman replies, "And you'll never have to."

We are each Jim Gordon, and at some point in the future, possibly as soon as right as you sit at this computer, you will be faced with a choice. How to deal with your pain.

You can go the easy route of the Joker, which I'll admit is tempting... you hurt so much less when you're hurting others, or when you're ignoring your pain in the hopes that it'll go away by covering it up with a ton of makeup (which does nothing more than accentuate, to those who know how to look, that you're hurting).

You can be Two-Face, and stop doing the good things that you would normally do because they're harder now, in light of the pain you're going through, and the good things that you've done in the past run the risk of being tainted from it. People remember what you do, and good people remember farther back and farther back in the past, but it is still the present that people remember the most clearly. If you choose to be Two-Face... you're doing more damage to yourself than you know.

Or you can be The Dark Knight, and you can work through the pain, you can do what you know is right BECAUSE it's right, you can reach out and try to help others who are also in need, you can find the lesson in your sufferings (because there is ALWAYS a lesson), and then you can teach that lesson to others. You can be a hero... and all you have to do, really, is decide...

...that you will be.

The outfit, the gadgets, and the car are really just perks after that!

(P.S. For anyone thinking that I'm a completely oblivious moron, let me just say that I'm in no way saying that I'm always going to make the choice to be Batman over the other two. For the most part we're all Jim Gordon, and there are times I've been Joker or Two-Face instead... but the more often I choose to be Batman, the easier it seems to get, and the stronger I get at making that decision the next time... and the better off the people around me tend to be. Think on it!)