Nations have been birthed in the visions of men. Great fortunes have been built on what the mind can perceive. Great inventions that have turned the world around have been conceived and incubated in the minds of mortal men.

Segun, a young lad of seventeen sat thoughtfully under the mango tree very close to his house. He was ruminating over the events that had just taken place in his house. His father had come in drunk as usual abusing and cursing everybody in sight, while his mother was sitting in a corner of their one-room apartment cuddling a young baby, the last of her seven children cringing in fear of a possible assault on her person by her husband.

His other siblings looking hungry and badly malnourished were lying down asleep on the floor. Segun had quietly walked out of the room to take a breath of fresh air and also to avoid an impending confrontation with the father. This paints the picture of a regular occurrence in Segun's family.

Today, as Segun was sitting under the mango tree, he made a very deep promise that he was not going to end up in life like his father. He promised himself that he was going to make something meaningful out of his life regardless of his current predicaments. There and then, Segun started a long journey into the future in his mind.

Like a skillful artist who puts on canvass with the right strokes of the brush and the right combination of colours a bright image of what is on the mind, he started to paint a picture of what he wants his future to look like. He painted the picture of a successful professional, with a beautiful and cute apartment married to an amiable, God-fearing, young, beautiful and vivacious lady. He painted the picture of two beautiful children being raised in an atmosphere of love and encouragement.

Thirteen years later, by the time he was thirty, Segun has become a Chartered accountant working for an international consultancy firm. He is married to Ngozi, a beautiful and God-fearing lady who teaches Mathematics in a highbrow private secondary school. They have a healthy looking and cute two-year old daughter. They live in a tastefully furnished two-bedroom apartment in a quiet part of the city.

What looked like wishful thinking and daydreaming had suddenly turned out to be reality in Segun's life. It is actually called vision. Vision perhaps one of the most greatly used word today. It still however packs in it a compelling force that determines where you go and end up in life. It buttresses a common statement that “If you can see it you can have it or what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)”.

Nations have been birthed in the visions of men. Great fortunes have been built on what the mind can perceive. Great inventions that have turned the world around have been conceived and incubated in the minds of mortal men.

When you cannot perceive or conceive where you are going or where you want to get to in life, you become a wanderer. When you don't know where you are going, you go where anybody tells you to go and end up where you never intended. But when you know where you are going, people, circumstances and situations may tend to give you a detour, but you can be sure that if you hold on strongly, you will end up at the desired destination.

Do you want to go places in life or do you want life to throw you into any place? Can you see where you are going or you would rather go anywhere, anybody tells you to go? How much are you prepared to put in and put up with to get to where you are going?

You too can learn to paint a bright future for yourself and realizing such future. This column is designed to help in achieving this purpose. Read it regularly. See you at the top.