May Your Dreams Become True

There has always been an industry built on aspiration. If you pay attention, the promise of transformation—whether intellectual, artistic, or physical—has long been a commodity. Writing courses that claim to unlock genius, sketching or photography guides that promise artistic mastery, and dubious fitness regimens that vow to sculpt the perfect body—these aren’t just advertisements. They’re carefully crafted invitations to dream.

And dreams, as it turns out, are highly profitable. People don’t buy a writing course for the lessons alone; they buy the possibility of becoming a writer. They don’t invest in a muscle-building program for the exercises; they invest in the image of their future, stronger self. Hope is the product, and the marketplace for it is endless.

Everywhere you look, these same mechanisms operate in more sophisticated forms. Online masterclasses promise to make us experts overnight. Social media sells curated lifestyles, inviting us to become wealthier, fitter, more enlightened—if only we subscribe, enroll, or buy in. The tactics may have evolved, but the business model remains the same: identify a longing, offer a shortcut, and cash in on the dream.

I’ve always understood that to mock these promises is to miss the point. The advertisements endure not because they deliver, but because, as humans, we will always be willing to believe. And in a world where reality so often disappoints, sometimes belief is enough to keep the dream alive.