I Already Failed at Football

Some news arrived recently that should have felt like winning. I had worked toward it for years. People around me understood it as a big deal, and I did too, in the way I understand that a package I ordered has arrived. Noted. Logged. Next. I read it twice. Then I spent more time wondering why I was not happy than enjoying what had happened.

I know I can feel the other thing. Morocco plays and I am perfectly capable of joy, shouting, caring far too much. My own milestones have a harder time getting that response out of me.

Where I grew up, football was the dream people knew how to celebrate. The flags, the cafes, grown men crying, all of it made sense to a child long before he had any idea what research was. I wanted to be a footballer. I was never close. Saying that now is funny because it was so long ago, and because the achievements I compare it with belong to a life that boy would not have known how to imagine.

Still, I suspect he has kept a vote. People congratulate me on something I actually did, and I can agree with them without quite receiving the feeling. I do not have a satisfying account of why. The childhood explanation is the one I keep returning to, because the response to football is so immediate and the response to my work so often needs translating.

There is a useful side to this, although I would not have chosen the whole arrangement. I can try something for which I have no credentials, start over, or look foolish with less fear than I might expect. Perhaps part of me has already had the disappointment it was worried about. I failed at football. The strange research problem was not even on the original list of things I could fail at.

From outside, that can look like confidence. I can spend years on a problem and still feel strange when someone congratulates me for solving it.

Curiosity and stubbornness can keep me occupied for a long time without teaching me how to have a celebration. The people who love me can be happier about my news than I am. I do not want to dismiss their happiness or move straight past an occasion we could have had together.

I am trying to stop and let a good thing happen when it happens. Say it out loud. Give it some time before moving to the next task. Sometimes the feeling catches up, a little late and smaller than I expected, but enough that I notice. I am clumsy at it. It can feel artificial to do deliberately what I thought should simply arrive.

When Morocco scores, apparently I need no help at all.