Get off the phone and into the arena.
Not too long ago, men woke up in the morning with nothing but their thoughts. What were they doing with their lives? Would their salary last until the next payday? Why did one of their children look like the gardener?
They could cross-examine life with a clarity that eludes today’s man.
Men these days? We wake up, and before our feet touch the ground, we are already hearing so many voices and thoughts that are not our own. It’s because we reach out for our smartphones first thing in the morning.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were not supposed to hear or read so many things in the morning or at any time of the day.
We wake up to some political activist’s latest video post, WhatsApp status updates from work colleagues, ex-partners, friends and relatives. The government says something about never-ending development, banks nudge you into debt, and, quite entertainingly, DJ Kandeke protects his artist.
It used to take a lifetime for a man to see a woman’s knees. Today, a barely dressed woman is just a scroll or tap away on our phones.
The average day begins with men’s phones fully charged while they wake up tired and drained. We are the most informed but most distracted generation of men.
Could we stop and take a digital detox sometimes? Try not to comment on every viral video, repost damaging rumours, bring politics into every conversation, use social media to score cheap points when you can have a conversation and resolve matters like grown-ups.
Have you seen how any man who is not in Zambia has been made to believe their opinion is truth and fact? All because we don’t want to own our realities in business, entertainment, social lives, governance, and even relationships and marriages. We are letting our phones think for us.
The results are pretty grim. We parrot everything we see online. Men who are not in the arena are lecturing us on how to lead our households, vote, run businesses, eat healthy, and maintain a relationship.
It is the equivalent of a man sitting in a cave and telling the brave ones how to go out into the forest, trap or hunt a wild animal, cook it and maintain your health.
Those men were never respected or given the time of day. So why have we, by extension, let people who aren’t building anything lecture us on how to lay a brick? The men who will win are the ones who get off the phone and into the arena.
