How Well Do You Know Yourself?
We all know a guy at ZESCO, someone in procurement, the husband to the CEO or the only mechanic in Lusaka who knows how to fix a Ferrari. There’s always someone we know for something and it is a mark of the well-connected man to have a powerful contact list in his phone.
To be a man is to have answers and solutions. This is why you must know a plumber, electrician, mechanic, carpenter, doctor, bricklayer, politician. Somebody.
But nobody really asks you if you know yourself.
Because what is life if you do not know who you are? No man becomes a man by using a manual or guide. He learns, makes mistakes, falls, rises.
But for all the ministers, celebrities, business people and diplomats that you know, how well do you know yourself as a man?
Would you bet on yourself to give a stranded woman a lift from Livingstone to Lusaka without your “sexual urges” consuming you? Would you accept a polite ‘thank you’ when you both arrive safely in the city?
How well do you know yourself? Do you trust yourself to deposit all the cash on behalf of your illiterate uncle who has sold his piece of land to fund his children’s education? Do you?
What about your new role as the Head of Procurement? Can you source supplies or services for your employer without giving your friends major contracts?
You see, many of us think we know ourselves well enough to not repeat the mistakes of the men that have fallen in the past.
We think we’re different. That power will not go to our heads. That corruption is beyond us. Money will not change us. Status will not change our outlook. It is the folly of a man to think he will handle failure or success differently when it is his turn on life’s conveyor belt.
Many of us think we know what we would do if the side chick said she was pregnant. Or the company laid us off in an organizational restructure to refocus on its core business.
The only way we can really know who we are is by embracing who we truly are.
If our capacity to commit to a Monday to Friday, 7am to 5pm job is questionable, we might be suited to the alternative world of enterprise, which demands more hours anyway.
Should we have little to no interest in commitment and having a family, may we never bother with wearing an expensive suit and standing at the altar with a love-struck woman.
Masculinity shines when it plays to its strengths and addresses its weaknesses.
If there’s anything to be said about the modern man, it’s that his biggest glaring mistakes, crimes and setbacks are the result of shortcomings he is too proud to accept and address. Know yourself.
