Hope, Despair, and The Dark Knight Rises on the night after the shootings

Hope is a funny thing.  So is seeing a movie the night after a horrific shooting at its premiere.

Obviously we are half a country away from Aurora, CO.  We're not in the suburb of a major city.  And we were safe, because we were at the movies.  And nothing bad happens at the movie theater, right?  Especially in West Michigan.

Still, we had a plan.  We knew how we were getting out of the theater if there was a fire (thanks for the plan, Leah.  And Steve offered to be last.).  We also knew that if someone came into the theater and started shooting we were not going to run.  We were going to drop to the ground and hide under our seats.  (Once in the theater we weren't sure how that would work since there isn't really a lot of room under those seats.  Especially once we were all tucked under them.  We would have made it work.)  I said my "I love yous" to my family and was glad that my husband was home with my girls, just in case.

As horrific as the shooting was to read about, and as many tears as I shed for those who sent their kids or spouses or parents to a midnight movie only to have them never return home, it still felt surreal.  I still felt completely safe watching The Dark Knight Rises at 10:30 p.m. the night after the shooting.  Sure, I had my "just in case" plans in place, but I never really thought anything would happen.

Until the movie started, and I kept checking the Exit doors.  And during the first shooting scene, when it's reported that the gunfire began in Theater 9 in Aurora, and I closed my eyes against the tears that tried to fall.  And then, when that guy tripped walking up the aisle and there was a loud thud and every single person in the theater began murmuring, and adrenaline began pumping through my veins and I thought about throwing myself on top of Leah and Amy to protect them.  I can honestly say that I have never had a movie experience like that one.

This morning, after my husband let me sleep in, and I sat reading Entertainment Weekly's review of The Dark Knight Rises, I noticed a quote that struck me as ironic.  Not the funny kind of irony, but the eerie kind that makes you think there's something deeper within certain events.  They quoted Bane, the film's villain, as saying, "There can be no true despair without hope."

Hope.  In the midst of the shooting in Aurora and the reminder it immediately brings of the shootings at Columbine, there is still that word: hope.

But there's also the ironic fact that what Holmes stole from moviegoers throughout the country--maybe even the world--is the hope that at a movie theater we can escape our lives for a while.  The hope that we can be safe.  That senseless shootings happen only on the big screen.  That spiraling downward into the darkness of despair is reserved for fictional characters.  Until the characters come off the screen and erase all of that hope with one pull of the trigger.

Bane's belief is shared by all who embrace chaos and terrorism: There can be no true despair without hope.  Without hope, the chaos is expected.  Safety is a dream, so senseless shootings aren't the nightmare.  But when hope creeps in, when I can believe for one second that there might be peace, then Bane, the Joker, shootings at the movies--they are true horror.

I didn't stay home from the movie theater last night, and I won't do so in the future.  I refuse to let someone who wants to destroy my hope dictate my life.  Because I believe something else about hope.  I believe that while it is true that there can be no true despair without hope, the opposite is also true. 

There can be no true peace or joy without hope.

Maybe just call me Robin.