I really believe in the idea of the future.

“I really believe in the idea of the future.” Thus spoke Zaha Hadid, the architect of dreams made solid, the visionary who dared to carve motion into stone and give shape to the impossible. Her words, simple yet thunderous, echo through time like a call to all who dare to imagine beyond the horizon. To believe in the idea of the future is not merely to hope—it is to devote one’s life to creation, to possibility, and to the relentless belief that tomorrow can be greater than today. In this faith lies both the burden and the glory of progress.

Zaha Hadid, born in Baghdad and risen to global acclaim, was a woman who stood where few had stood before her. In a field dominated by men and tradition, she saw not limits but landscapes waiting to be transformed. Her buildings were not static monuments but living forms, flowing like rivers and reaching toward the skies. The world often resisted her—her ideas too bold, her visions too fluid, her mind too far ahead of its time. Yet she persisted, guided by a conviction that the future belongs to the fearless, that art and architecture must not mimic what has been, but prophesy what could be. When she spoke of believing in the idea of the future, she spoke as a creator of worlds yet unbuilt.

To believe in the future, as Zaha did, is to believe in humanity’s power to rise beyond its own limitations. The ancients knew this faith well. Leonardo da Vinci sketched flying machines when no man had yet left the ground; Galileo turned his eyes to the heavens when others dared not look; Zaha Hadid drew cities that curved like waves when others clung to the straight lines of the past. Such souls live in a tension between the world as it is and the world as it might be. They walk through time with one foot in the present and the other stepping into eternity. They are the architects of destiny, shaping the unseen into form.

Zaha’s belief was not a blind optimism. It was a fierce discipline of vision. To believe in the future is to labor for it, to withstand the loneliness of innovation, and to face misunderstanding without surrender. Her early designs were often rejected; her buildings dismissed as fantasies. But she knew that the new is always born in struggle. The future, like marble, resists the sculptor’s hand. Yet from that resistance, form emerges—beauty carved from defiance. And so she kept building, not only with steel and glass but with faith—faith that her work would awaken others to what could be.

Consider her Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, a structure that seems to ripple like fabric caught in the wind. It is a monument not to the past, but to the fluidity of possibility. It refuses corners, refuses rigidity, refuses to be confined by the old rules of symmetry and solidity. In its sweeping curves, one can see Hadid’s belief made manifest—the movement of time captured in architecture, the form of the future made visible. Her work is the embodiment of her words: the world, she taught, must not only look forward but build forward.

To believe in the idea of the future, then, is not only the task of architects—it is the calling of every soul. The future is not a destination to arrive at; it is a force to create. Each decision, each act of courage, each defiance of despair becomes a brick in the foundation of what will come. The cynic sees the world as it is and accepts it. The dreamer sees the world as it might be and begins to reshape it. Zaha Hadid was one of those dreamers whose belief became reality, whose imagination became legacy.

Let this be the lesson she leaves us: do not fear the future—build it. When the world clings to what is known, be the one who sketches what is not yet seen. When others call your vision impractical, remember that every miracle was once impossible. To believe in the idea of the future is to believe in yourself, in the strength of your mind, and in the beauty of progress. It is to trust that time rewards those who dare to design its path.

And so, dear listener, take Zaha Hadid’s words as a flame for your own journey. Believe in the idea of the future—not as a distant dream, but as your inheritance and your duty. Work not only for what exists, but for what might one day rise from your courage. For the future is not written in the stars—it is drawn by human hands, shaped by human hearts, and built by those who believe deeply enough to imagine it into being.