Can you see your future?

I watched a comedy movie starred by one of Nigeria’s most popular actors. In the movie, a young man attended a job interview. The interviewer asked him some questions. One of them was “What do you see yourself becoming five years from now?” and his response was “Ah madam, I am not a wizard; I do not have supernatural powers so I cannot tell what I will become five years from now.”

It is funny, right? Yes, I laughed a lot too. The entire job interview was hilarious.

After some moments of fun, I immediately yanked back into reality. I felt like the interviewer was asking me the same question. “What do you see yourself becoming five years from now?”

To be honest, I do have aspirations but I have never expressed them in words. I know I want to be better than I am now, I want to have more than I do now and I want to achieve more than I have now. However, I do not have the exact words to express my innermost desires. At that moment, I felt that the comedy movie was a wake-up call; it was time to form the words and put into writing, my aspirations.

When it comes to matters of the future, I have heard comments such as the future is uncertain; we do not know what the future has in store for us; tomorrow will take care of itself, whatever will be will be, and so on. It looks to me as though these comments suggest that it is unwise or useless to make plans for the future because it is uncertain.

Is the future really uncertain?

I have come to realize and I am sure that you will agree with me that there is indeed a future. The future begins from tomorrow and when today ends, we expect to see tomorrow. If we can anticipate tomorrow, should we not anticipate next week, next month, next year, or five years from now? I think it makes a lot of sense to do so.

And what is more? We do not need supernatural powers to do that!

If we can anticipate a future, then we can visualize our lives in this future. This I believe is the basis for the question what do you see yourself becoming five years from now?

I see visualization as a gift. It gives you the liberty to draw any kind of mental image you wish to. There are no limits, no boundaries. Visualization gives you a pen with ink that can never go out and a sheet as wide as the earth. We have the freedom to decide the lengths and depths of our imaginations. We have the ability, we have the tools.

I find that children are able to visualize without thinking a lot about it. If you ask a child what he wants to be when he grows up, he already has an answer; although that answer may change the following day. Children can easily draw mental pictures and express the kind of father or mother they want to be when they are older; the kind of house they want to live in or the city they want to live in; the number of children they want to have; the type of jobs and the amount of money they want to earn. You are sure to have a good laugh when you listen to children talk about their aspirations.

Why does it change as we grow older? Could it be due to maturity or the realization that there is more to just visualizing a beautiful life?

I think that we have the power of visualization for a reason hence we should utilize it. I think that the difference between adults and children should be that adults can now plan and work towards making their visualizations a reality.

#MMBA 3