Reacher

     Reacher is the name of a fictional character created by author Lee Child. Tom Cruise made a couple of movies portraying the character, but many fans of the novels objected that Cruise was not physically an appropriate match for the character's depicted size, etc. and Child, who has become successful by catering specifically to the tastes of his readership responded by selling the rights to make a video series to Amazon featuring this character. Season one of the series was released earlier this year. The main character Reacher is supposed to be about 6'5" & about 250 lbs. They cast well when they chose Alan Ritchson, but he had to gain 30 lbs in muscle for the part. But I digress. 

I've developed a habit of bookmarking specific scenes from movies, TV shows, etc, and rewatching these scenes from time to time. I've come to recognize that I'm motivated to do so because there's some sort of emotional harmonic resonance with something I'm carrying around but have yet to name and/or identify. 

There's such a scene I bookmarked in episode seven of season one. The scene is a flashback to when Reacher is still an adolescent living in Okinawa. His father is in the military and has been transferred to Germany under unusual circumstances and while packing, his mother says something to Reacher and his older brother:

"You look so confused right now. You see good people being punished and bad people getting what they want and don't understand why. I'm going to tell you something that won't make sense right now. Hopefully it will one day, when you're older."

"Joe, you don't need to solve all the world's problems. Solving some is more than enough."

"And Reacher, you have the strength of three boys your age. What are you going to do with that strength, hmm?"

"You're going to do what's right."

On her deathbed, their mother reveals that in that moment she recognized and was affirming the goodness that she saw in their natures.

As I continue to process through my mother's passing away, I can start to define a basic shape to a piece of baggage I still carry around in terms of how... unknown I felt in relation to my mother.  And I suspect that this is the kernel of my belief that who I was and what I was capable of accomplishing would always be obscured to my detriment, so this is going to be really not so fun to come to grips with.