"Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask."
-- Bane, Dark Knight Rises
I got to thinking about this quote from The Dark Knight Rises. It was spoken by the now infamous super villain, Bane. The extremely powerful masked man who is hell bent on the destruction of Gotham City and Batman, also known as playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne. If you aren't familiar with the story of Batman you're in luck, you don't have to be to get the main point of this post. Read Batman 101 if you want to know more about the story of Batman, if not simply read on.
Batman 101:
Basically for all of you non-batman fans out there all you need to know is that after losing his parents to a violent crime in the alley of a theater, young Bruce Wayne grows up without a mother and father, still very rich but he would trade it all for just their love again. As an adult he joins an organization called the League of Shadows where he learns under the tutelage of Ras Al Ghul (pronounced Ray-sh Al Ghoul). When asked to execute a man to prove his loyalty to Ras, Bruce refuses, turns against the League and narrowly escapes with his life. He goes on to become Batman, our favorite dark and scary caped crusader. With the help of fancy gadgets, his trusty butler, Alfred Pennyworth, and friends like Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman in the movies), he dedicates his life to fighting crime ensuring that what happened to him as a child never happens to anyone else.
So I got to thinking about this quote and it's connotations to real life. Until we become something other than just ordinary, nobody cares who you are. I'll use a good example and a bad example:
Good:
You somehow come up with a cure for cancer in your basement and suddenly you're a savior, a God, you've been blessed from on high with a gift and you're using it to help people. Who is this person? Where did he come from? How did he grow up? They'll run television shows about your life, about your family, about your hardships and struggles. Articles will be written about you and your name will forever be immortalized in stone. But is that you? In a sense you had to become something more than what you were to get people to even notice that you share the same space as them.
Bad:
You've had it with evil mega banks taking advantage of you. They're threatening to take your house so you decide to get even. You burn the house that you're about to lose to foreclosure down but you don't stop there. You're an arsonist and go burning every house owned by that bank just to spite them. Naturally you get caught and arrested and you're now facing a massive jail sentence. But just like the person who cured cancer suddenly everybody wants to know your name, who you are, what you did, what caused you to become a serial arsonist? Was there something in your past that made you go bad? Bad parenting, surely they must be monsters etc. Again, you've become something far removed from what you were and suddenly people notice...
Now this blog in no way is encouraging anyone to become a serial arsonist for attention, or go out and do something awful to get recognized... if you're going to cure cancer, do that please... but anyway, it seems that like Bane and Batman, nobody cared who they were until they put on their masks and became the figures they were. Batman represents the light (or darkness sometimes he walks a fine line) and Bane represents the darkness...
Why is it that nobody cares who you are until you're front and center? Does our society have it backwards? What could we learn from each other if this wasn't the case? Who's story is out there that you may need to hear but can't because this person isn't something other than what they are?
