Swinging Forward with Hope

In the days since the Presidential election, I’ve been thinking a lot about the film, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

I can hear you now: Sarah, that’s a strange leap. Are you okay?

The answer is of course not. When your core beliefs have been shaken, it’s easy to wonder if anything matters anymore, if anything will ever be okay again.

Where do we begin? What becomes of us?

In moments of deep heartache, loss, and disillusionment, I tend to seek answers in art. Our capacity for creativity is one of the best things about humanity. Art unites us, it illuminates stories we may not otherwise know, it inspires, it connects us. Art, when done right, and not used as a tool to punch down or perpetuate, encourages us to live with empathy. To create and to engage with it requires us to embody different lives and to find understanding within them willingly.

Across timelines, and worlds, and backgrounds, we share in the human experience.

We relate. We find compassion. We find hope.

As silly as it may seem, in Spider-Man: No Way Home, I find just that.

Throughout the film, Peter has the best intentions to help those he loves, and later, those he believes he can offer a chance at a better life. But, it doesn’t go to plan. Everything begins to fall apart around him. His Aunt May, is killed by someone he sought to help. The world nearly comes to an end, and only the way to save it is for everyone to forget Peter Parker existed, including his best friends.

The future he envisions disappears. Those he loves are gone. Peter is alone.

Despite his efforts to do good. Despite his efforts to try.

As depressing as this may seem, I believe Peter’s ending is also one of the most hopeful in cinema.

Peter could’ve chosen to give up, to believe that there was no point in trying to do good anymore or in acting with decency.

Instead, the film ends with Peter in his new apartment, chatter crackling across his police scanner. He pulls his Spider-Man mask off his sewing machine, and dons it with the rest of his suit. Throwing open the window, he swings out into the Manhattan skyline, going to help those in need like he always had.

Although we have not been in Peter’s exact situation, we know what it’s like to pour ourselves into something that we believe to be right, only to have it upended. To have all your work be for naught. To want to believe the best in people, only to have that belief stripped away.

We understand that impulse to want to give up. Since the election, I have felt it plenty.

But we can’t, because as much as it hurts, as shattered as our hearts and spirits may be, we know the work will not get done if we are not there to do it.

We may have been beaten.

Our faith may have been rocked.

But there is still good for us to do.

There is still work that won’t get done unless we do it.

We still need to help each other.

We can still swing forward.