Feeee | Jiro Kokuryo (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)

2011.10.27

I had a dream that brought back a long-forgotten memory from my past.

It was from a day during my junior high school years in England, when I was playing as a goalkeeper in an inter-house soccer match. (It's rare for me, Kokuryo, who is not very athletic, to talk about sports, but when it came to soccer, I was good enough to be selected for the school's representative team for external matches—though I was always a substitute because there was a genius player in my grade. By the way, I was no match for rugby due to my physique, and my baseball habits from Japan got in the way of playing cricket.)

A powerful shot was taken from inside the penalty area. Judging it was heading for the upper part of the goal, I took a couple of steps back and jumped. It was almost directly above me, slightly to the left. The moment I thought, "Okay, I can't catch it, but I can deflect it..." a teammate's foot came in from the side and changed the ball's trajectory... Oh no... As I was rising, I re-read its course. The direction hadn't changed, and it still seemed to be heading for the goal at a similar spot, but its speed had dropped, and it was now a looping shot. "This is bad. My body will start to fall before it reaches the goal..." Sure enough, the ball hadn't reached me yet when my body began to descend. A helpless feeling. Feeee.

The dream itself had a more nonsensical plot, but it ended at the point where it made me remember that "feeee" moment. Of course, I don't know why I had such a dream. It might be a sign that I'm about to face a "feeee" situation (I hope not), or it could just be that the series of "feeee" moments I'm already facing daily simply appeared in my dream.

On a more optimistic note, I wonder if someone is trying to encourage me by reminding me of an experience where things turned out okay. In that soccer scene, when the ball arrived, the middle finger of my right hand barely remained in its path. When I pushed with the muscles in my finger joint, the ball, which had lost its speed, lifted about 30 centimeters, scraped the corner of the crossbar, and went over the top.

Thanks to the dream, I even remembered the sensation of trying to stay in the air by stretching every joint from my fingertips to my little toes. I think sports are good not just for the sense of fulfillment from winning, but because they allow you to experience unexpected turns, setbacks, and recoveries from a young age—things you will inevitably encounter in life. I feel that the minor sense of frustration and the small sense of accomplishment from that time connected to the much larger setbacks and recoveries that came later.

(Date of publication: 2011/10/27)