3. When You Do Fail, Don’t Let It Destroy You
Both Batman and Bruce Wayne embody the rhetoric of failure. Much of the
Dark Knight Rises is created around this theme and depicted through the
initial defeat of Batman by Bane. The significant word in the previous
sentence is, ‘initial’. Batman was initially defeated by Bane but he didn’t let it
destroy him. He could have let Bane destroy him on numerous occasions by
choosing not to ‘get back up’. Luckily Bruce Wayne took note of his fathers’
early words to him. Batman’s father explained to the young Bruce Wayne
that the reason we fall is, “So we can learn to pick ourselves up”. Every single
person on this Earth has failed at something, from the not so big failures to
the mother of all failures.
We can all let failure destroy us. We could choose not to pick ourselves back
up. We could choose to never again take the risk that led to our failure, or
simply just to give up trying at all, swearing to ourselves then that we can’t
fail if we are not really even trying. But failure is a tremendous teacher.
Failure can, if we choose to allow it, motivate us to go on, teach us what
went wrong and what needs to change and reveal to us how close we are to
success. In the words of Truman Capote, “failure is the condiment that gives
success its flavour.” Batman teaches us that success is only possible after
failure, so long as you pick yourself back up again.
WRITTEN BY COBY CHARTERS