Dare to Dream

Diarmuid Hudner – CEO of CyberSmarties

A Child’s Chair

I decided to sit upon time on a child’s chair
To be sobered by rain and intoxicated by air
To inhale wonder and exhale thought
Of every logic and reason sought
To see no measure of a distance run
But boundless impish feckless fun
To hear no clock but to daydream light
And sleep away darkness on Queen’s and Knights
For are we not all but young children grown
Made cynical by a lifetime tapestry sewn
Taught to find answers of what cannot be learned
That happiness is in living and cannot be earned
So let yourself sail on a child’s swing
Scream out loud or dare to sing
Float for a while on an eternal chance
And remember your unabashed youthful dance

Diarmuid Hudner

I wrote the poem above because when you were a child, nothing was impossible. You dared to dream. There’s a lot to be learned from children and about how as a society we need to change the way we are doing things. We need to start living.

Oh God! To reach the point of death only to realise you have never lived

Henry David Thoreau

I came across this quote recently in an old National Geographic magazine in a doctor’s surgery. I thought that perhaps it wasn’t the best place for it to be left hanging around considering the state of health of everyone in the room, but it certainly served the purpose of concentrating the mind!!

It was strange that I came across it as I’ve been thinking around that topic the last few weeks. Where my office is in Limerick City, I have the advantage of being near a large Georgian window which overlooks The Crescent. Each day thousands of people must pass, young and old and I watch their faces. There is a weariness evident, a greyness, not just through the sheets of rain camouflaging the sun, but something else – people are stressed.

Work for most people has become more about existing than sustaining. We work to exist and ensure our families exist. Work has become less about sustaining your dreams. When I look at the people passing it seems to me like the energy has been sucked out of us and this simply isn’t how life should be.

The way we are living and working today needs to change. Working nine to five is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to then people didn’t work like that, they worked according to the sunlight allowing them to work. I’m not saying we revert to that but I am saying that productive work and forced work have long since proven to be unhappy bedfellows. I have a simple philosophy here for everyone working at CyberSmarties and it goes like this “It’s not about the hours you put in, it’s about what you put into the hours”. When you are happy you’ve done enough then go home, go to the park, live your life. It’s about treating people like adults and I firmly believe a person with a happy life will be a happy employee.

Everyone here is encouraged to have vision, to create, to get excited. Before we are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, accountants, nurses, farmers, we are human beings. Humans are designed to create. Everyone has a dream. Everyone has the ability to create that dream into something tangible that will sustain them both financially and spiritually – I truly believe that. Cybersmarties is about allowing children the freedom and safety to dream, to create. People aren’t inspired by following the status quo. They are inspired by those who allow them to be inspirational.

 

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