On August 10, 2011, I published an article on this blog titled, Jungian Psychology and Sports. I am re-visiting this topic now due to a very short, but meaningful dream that I had recently. The dream:

I made a really long basketball shot.

Shortly after this dream I wrote the poem below titled, The Shot:

Half court
No line

Game is tied
No lie

Ball in hand
No line

Half court
No open man

Should I shoot
No way

One dribble more
Off it goes

Ball in air
Should I look

In it goes
Swoosh, swoosh

Game won
All seconds done

Game of life
Won, one

As I discussed in the 2011 blogpost, dreams not infrequently use the metaphor of sport to draw your attention to a pertinent area of your life that can be seen like sport.  In other words, sports in dreams can draw attention to your own “game of life.”

Furthermore, I wrote in 2011 that the psyche expects from you full engagement in your life with all of the emotion, thrill and risk embedded in the sports that you might play or view.

Sports not only symbolize your own “game of life,”  but sports can also symbolize the human conditions of hope and perseverance.  Like in my dream above, making the long shot, can give hope when situations in your life seem beyond possible or hopeless.

You watch and are impassioned by sports partly to see individuals and teams pull off the unlikely or impossible. You project your own “game of life” onto your favorite team.  Watching sports with the right perspective can be helpful for your own symbolic “game of life,” but it should never be a substitute (and this is often the case) for living fully and embracing the challenges and “long shots” that may be asked of you from your soul.