I’ve never been a violent individual or one who welcomed arguments and confrontation.  I grew up in the tradition of my mother and grandmother who were peaceful by nature.  I haven’t had a ticket for any moving violation in years and never stood before a judge due to a crime, thank God!

Having said that I have always had a love for movies about confrontation, justification and vindication.  At first, I thought my love for movies of all genre’s came from my brother.  He was formally trained in theater and became an actor, writer, producer and lastly college professor.  I remember being taken to the movies, by our father, to see him on the big screen and getting calls to watch him on an upcoming episode of The Jefferson’s and Hill Street Blues.  Knowing he was my brother, I studied movies. The actors that he befriended became my friends-in my head, as Wendy Williams would say.  Knowing Hollywood made me feel closer to my brother, so I studied his art form with fervor.

As children, we are shaped by the possibilities or impossibilities of life and the realization of those around us.  Even from a small town I dreamed big.  My brother had shattered the glass ceiling through every contact he made in theater and film.  Then, life hit and disappointment arrived.  My first missed landmark was the Mercedes-Benz I  promised myself I would have by my 30th birthday.  From there, more disappointment than victories when I learned to live in the shadow of the benefit I had become to the lives of others.  Strangely enough, I began to gravitate to stories of vindication.  I watched Shawshank Redemption and cheered when Tim Robbins character swam to freedom under the most uncomfortable conditions imaginable after being wrongfully accused and convicted.  Something in me understood his plight even if I could not understand why.

Prisons are constructed everyday and they are not always the brick and mortar buildings we imagine them to be.  Disappointment builds prisons, dreams-deferred build prisons, indecision builds prisons and self-sacrifice builds prisons.  The majority of people relate to incarceration through visuals of prison bars.  But…before one prison bar can be installed, there must be concrete, electrical, plumbing and roofing.  The bars only provide the definition of what was being constructed all along.  There is something known as the prison of the mind.  It is constructed through situations, circumstances and shortcomings.  And when you realize it exists, through the bars that bring it into focus, it has been under construction….sometimes for years.

We are in such a time of focus.  When the camera pans to give you a wide-angled view.  What…have…you…built?  As we are being forced to focus on the things the media would provide us during this time, I trust that we would find our own programming.  Programming that says, “What is for you will not pass you.”  My brother, for years would tell me, Your a writer you know? So, I “see” it is time to take down the wall I constructed to pacify my losses and thank the Lord who kept me through my self-imposed exile.  During this time of reflection, I’m grateful for the God of Isaiah 40:31,…they shall mount up with winds like eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.  And for my brother, Anthony Major, who became the word made flesh…all things are possible to those that believe.