Do Dreams Come True, or Are They Dreams Precisely Because They Don't? | Yasuo Takagi (Dean, Graduate School of Health Management)
2011.11.14
When I think of dreams, what immediately comes to mind is the "I Have a Dream" public speaking by Martin Luther King Jr., the Black leader of the American civil rights movement. It was delivered in August 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where 250,000 people participated, marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and it has gone down in history as a monumental phrase of the American civil rights movement.
In it, dreams such as "the dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood" and "the dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" were spoken one after another along with the words "I Have a Dream," leading the U.S. Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the following year.
Dr. King's appeal, "We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers," makes those of us who study social issues recognize anew the difficulty of the task and inspires our passion for research.
Dr. King was assassinated in April 1968 at the young age of 39, but this year in October, a giant statue of Dr. King with his arms crossed was reportedly completed in Washington, D.C., near the memorials to Presidents Jefferson and Lincoln. President Obama gave the unveiling public speaking, and I would love to hear how Dr. King, who would have been 82 if he were alive, would evaluate the current situation in America and President Obama, who can be called a child of the civil rights movement.
While it may not have the power to gather 250,000 people as it once did, young anti-inequality protesters seeking jobs have been occupying a park near Wall Street in New York since the summer, and President Obama is also struggling with the unimproving unemployment rate and the American economy. Amid the Greek debt crisis and the turmoil of the EU economy, the realization of the dream of liberty and equality is not easy, and not just in America. Perhaps they are dreams precisely because they do not come true. The passion for equality of the young people continuing their anti-inequality occupation in a snow-covered park lives on across the ages.
This is a story about a dream I had of walking through the secondhand bookstore district of Kanda, Tokyo. The university I attended was in Chiba City, so visiting the Kanda bookstores was a major event, for which I would scrape together what little money I had and carry my bag. In the dream, I am standing in front of the shelves of a secondhand bookstore specializing in social sciences, picking up books and explaining their content and significance to a student behind me. However, in the middle of my cheerful explanation, I start to cry. I woke up startled and puzzled over why I had such a dream, but I eventually realized the reason was my regret that my youthful desire to read more books and create a better society had not been fulfilled. I should add that I had this tearful dream on the night of Friday, March 18, one week after the March 11 earthquake.
(Date of publication: 2011/11/14)