“It’s Gonna Be A Big Event”

You probably know by now that a man’s biggest milestones rarely announce themselves with trumpets and a man in a white rob descending from the shimmering sky above us. Frankly, that’s the only time it’s gonna be a big event.

For everything else, life is a series of occasions that add up to the next success or failure. 

Even when you’re declared Republican President of Zambia, the announcement is welcomed with much fanfare but there is a sobering moment where it sinks in that you have over 20 million people to literally handhold because you said you’re their messiah. 

Because life truly hits you in the quietest moments of masculinity. 

The time you have to accept that maybe the business is not actually making sense and you have to shut it down. That does not happen with any fanfare. It is a quiet reflective moment where your friends are not your friends and you’re drowning in bills, debt and six-month payroll arrears. 

It’s not gonna be a big event when your doctor reads the results of your blood test, cannot look you in the eye when he says it’s prostate cancer or an inoperable tumor. 

The moment when you hold your first child will be one of joy for everybody around you. But it is a humbling experience where you know your life is now intertwined with this human being. 

There will be the day you finally receive that email with a job offer. It won’t be a big event. You would have lived through the desperation of asking for money to get on a bus or taxi, slept in the house of somebody who thought you were not pushing hard enough for a job.

It will be a quiet occasion of pain relief. 

Men do not have big events. They have small wins that build up to becoming a father, getting a job, moving into the house they built. It is a life that is bereft of fanfare. 

Often spent looking for answers, money, long lost fathers, the rejection of a woman, failure to win contracts, losing contracts, discovering their true friends, learning you’re not the father.

Society wonders why we do not celebrate our birthdays with enthusiasm. It is because birthdays are big events. Weddings too. We look at what we endure on a daily basis to provide, protect, lead and wonder why the fanfare about a life spent in the shadows of solitude? 

When we choose not to be celebratory about our wins and successes, it is not because we are ungrateful. We are accused of downplaying our hard work and encouraged to live in the moment of our achievements. We wish we could.

A life that is unforgiving of failure, insular to our inability to provide and only recognizes us for our financial capability is rarely gonna be a big event.