It is a sea without shores. It is the sea ridden by the bankrupt of the world. It is said:
“Wishes are the capital of the bankrupt, and its travel provisions are the promises of Satan, and impossible imaginations and falsehood. The wealth of false wishes and false imaginations continue to play with one who rides them the way that dogs play with a corpse. They are the supplies of every disgraced, humiliated, low soul, having no conviction to achieve external realities. So it turned away from them with mental wishes. And everyone has it according to his state: From a wisher for power and authority, or travel and international travel, or wealth and valuables, or women … The wisher imagines an image of what he desires in his mind, and he succeeds in creating it and takes pleasure in capturing it. While he is in this state he suddenly awakes to find his hand chained.”
The one who has lofty/high conviction [himmah] his hopes pivot around knowledge and faith and deeds which will bring him closer to his Lord. These wishes are faith, light and wisdom, while the wishes of those are deception and delusion.
The Prophet (SallAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) praised the one who wishes for good, and made his reward in some things similar to that of the one who actually does it, like the one who says: If I had money I would do as so-and-so does who fears his Lord regarding his wealth, strengthening family ties with it, and extracts from it what is required. He said: “Regarding reward, they are equal.”
The Prophet (SallAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) wished in the Farewell Pilgrimage that he was doing Hajj Tamattu’ and khalla and that he did not take a sacrificial animal with him, as he was doing Hajj Qiraan. So Allaah gave him the reward of Qiraan which he did and the reward of Tamattu’ which he wished for and combined for him both rewards.