In Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows Mr. Toad, the owner of Toad Mansion and the great traveler on the Open Road who is always on a new vehicle going to faraway places, cannot comprehend how Mr. Rat can find contentment in a simple cottage on the river where he dwells all year and never explores the wider world of new sights and foreign lands: “You surely don’t mean to stick to your dull fusty river all your life, and just live in a hole in a bank, and boat. I want to show you the world.”

To be human is to be born with desires, to have wishes, and to experience longings. But not all wishes have the same quality, nature, or origin. Some wishes assume the shape of daydreams or fantasies as utopian visions enter the mind and people imagine impossibilities.

According to proverbial wisdom, “When you do succeed, the chances are that you were not trying too hard in the first place.” This observation appears to contradict the idea of ...