opinion
The idea of the ‘impossible dream’ is accepted far too easily. What, exactly, is impossible about a life already being lived - fully, continuously - by someone else every single day?
What you call a dream comes from something real: a way of living you’ve seen, directly or indirectly, existing as someone else’s normal. Which means there is nothing inherently impossible about it. What is called ‘impossible’ is often just something that comes with requirements you have not yet accepted - a version of yourself that does not yet exist consistently.
Because impossibility is not about life.
It is about the gap between who you are and who that life requires. Nothing you have ever had came without you first meeting its demands. Every outcome required something - discipline, focus, consistency - and you met it, even if only briefly. That is what made it possible. So if this life is real, then it comes with the same thing: requirements. Less indulgence. Less distraction. Less acting on mood. More discipline. More structure. A body maintained. A routine kept. A life in order. And once you see it clearly, it becomes unavoidable. Because it is no longer about how to get it, but who you must be to live it. What becomes clear, then, is that nothing you want exists as something to be reached. Everything exists as a state - not metaphorically but practically.
A state is a way of operating - how you think, decide, what you tolerate and what you repeat - that produces a consistent reality.
A city is a state. Not just geography, but pace, pressure and expectation. An expensive, high-demand environment does not only require money; it requires sharpness, awareness, speed - the ability to hold yourself under pressure. If you cannot maintain that state, it resists you. A lifestyle is a state. Not an outcome, but a pattern - standards repeated until they become normal. What looks like a life is a stabilised way of operating. Remove the pattern and the lifestyle disappears. Maintain it and it returns. Relationships follow the same structure. They are states - sustained through presence, emotional control, communication and consistency. When the state drops, the relationship changes. So nothing you want is external. It only appears that way because you are seeing the surface of something internally maintained. What feels ‘out of reach’ is rarely distance; it is unfamiliarity - a level you are not yet consistently aligned with. And the moment you understand it this way, the idea of ‘getting there’ dissolves. There is no sudden arrival - only gradual alignment, until what once felt foreign becomes standard. Until it becomes you.
If everything is a state, then direction becomes precise. You stop reaching for the life and begin with the person.
Because the life you admire is inseparable from the person who lives it - how they think, how they decide, how they use their time, what they tolerate and what they refuse. The life does not sit beside them; it follows them. So the move is simple: you become your dream person. Not in theory but in the daily ways that define them. You embody what you have always admired - the discipline, the clarity, the restraint, the focus, the standard. And in doing so, you stop being separate from the life that requires those things. Every outcome is produced by a pattern and that pattern is the person. Step into that pattern consistently and you are no longer outside the conditions that create the life - you are inside them. You are no longer trying to access that life; you are generating it. And if you live like the person you admire, the life that belongs to them meets you - not as a reward but as a consequence.
Maybe the word ‘impossible’ is used too casually.
Not because the life cannot exist - but because accepting it would require something most people avoid: responsibility. Once the life is real and the requirements are real, what follows is unavoidable. The distance is not circumstance. Not timing. Not access. It is you. Because to have what you want, you have to become the person it requires - consistently, without negotiation. And this is where most people stop. They are willing to want it, willing to admire it, willing to speak about it - but not willing to take responsibility for becoming it. The moment you do, everything becomes exact. There is no gap between desire and outcome. No illusion that you can want one thing while living in opposition to it. No fantasy. No outsourcing. Only integrity. To want status without discipline. To want love without emotional capacity. To want a lifestyle without structure. To want the aesthetic without standards. Once something is understood as conditional, you either meet it or you don’t. There is no in-between. So what remains is responsibility.
Ultimately, it is always about becoming.
The life you want is not something you arrive at and then learn how to manage. It exists only for the version of you who already matches it. This means stability is not created after the fact; it is decided beforehand - by who you are. Because when you become first - when you fully step into the standards, discipline, clarity and self-respect that your ideal life requires - nothing about that life feels out of place. Nothing overwhelms you. Nothing feels beyond you. Because it isn’t. It is a direct reflection of you. You don’t adjust to it. You don’t rise into it. You don’t convince yourself you deserve it. You simply live it. And that is the difference - not in what you get, but in who you are when you get there. Because you do not get the life you love by chasing it. You get it by becoming what you have always loved. And as long as you are willing to fully accept that responsibility, there is nothing about that life that remains out of reach.
Neshmeeya Abbas is an author based in London. She can be reached at [email protected]
