Dreams: November 22, 1999 issue of New Thinking

November 22, 1999 New Thinking:
Dreams

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November 22, 1999

Dreams

By Gerry McGovern

Last week as I was driving from Tralee in County Kerry towards Dublin, I approached Mountrath, a small town in County Laois. Every time I pass through Mountrath I remember back to 1995 when as I approached the town the engine of my clapped-out car began to sound like a washing machine in spin mode, as the heat gauge rushed to the top of the charts.

I didn’t want to stop in the narrow, bending main street, so I lurched forward. A death rattle suddenly kicked in like bad heavy metal. As luck would have it I swerved off the road through an open gate into a field of hay.

Three hours later I stood in the rain waiting for a bus in my wet suit. I repeatedly cursed the car and everything else I could think of to curse. I looked like a wet rat and felt like a real fool. Reaping the Internet opportunity was a receding dream as the bus trundled towards the city.

Still, I had spent most of life on crazy dreams and had suffered the fool’s fate on more occasions than I wished to remember. I had made a commitment to myself that every time things got really bad, I would, instead of giving up, re-double my efforts.

As I drove through Mountrath this time I felt both vindicated and unsure. I certainly had a better car now but the Internet is an elusive animal, so open and full of promise and as open as a trap for the unsuspecting ones. Then I looked up and saw, for the first time, our very first billboard campaign for Local Ireland. We had indeed come a distance, even though we had quite a distance to go.

Dreams.

If you can’t dream of it, if you can’t imagine it, then how can you ever hope to grasp it? People sometimes say to me that in my wildest dreams I must not have been able to imagine Nua being as successful a company as it is now. The first part of my reply is cautious; Nua has had success but it operates within the most competitive marketplace in the world. No room for the smallest amount of complacency.

Then I say that, yes, I dreamed of this much success. In fact, I have dreamed of much, much more. To me, the ultimate point of perfection is the only place worth striving towards. If I fail, well, at least I tried.

On the way down to Tralee I had listened to a radio programme on Denis O’Brien, a very successful Irish entrepreneur. He had recounted that in the period before he had made the big breakthrough he was on the verge of bankruptcy five or six times. I know the feeling and I’m sure that anyone who has ever made a success of anything knows only too well what it’s like living at the edge.

I’d like to raise a toast to anyone who has ever had a dream and was willing to go out there and give it a go. You are surely not alone, for you are part of a worldwide club of fools who know that “in dreams begins responsibility.”

Gerry McGovern

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In dreams begin responsibilities