Play with it a little bit.

Every man can pretend it doesn’t affect him or that he’s already experiencing it. But there comes a time, without good fortune for some in their early forties, where a man simply has to look at how nothing seems to move naturally unless he plays with it. 

Life does become mundane. Repetitive. Work, home, church. Repeat. Four Mondays. Twelve times. The year is done. You don’t even remember anything from April 2022.

We’re not coming out alive from this place. Yet we spend our time here focused on the Mark X that cut us off in traffic, how we were not picked by our friend for a football match in grade five, the woman we want who doesn’t want us back. 

There’s a guy we all know who just won’t stop talking about this one time he worked at a very bad company. Or the car his father used to drive.

Chaps who never live in the moment. Like most men, I’m guilty of this. Either lodged firmly in the past or thinking too far into the future. And there is nothing wrong with having memories or having a vision for the future. 

But veering too far off your course is why men are having strokes, high blood pressure and poor mental health. Today is Sunday and we’re already consumed by this week’s deadlines, bills, targets, work environment. Stress.

Isn’t it funny that the one statement that a man with dwindling libido says is perhaps the most applicable to the life of a man who is stuck in a work, family, business or daily loop? We’re stuck in a vicious cycle and rarely catch our breath.

We should play with it a little bit, this life. 

We all know our roles and the responsibilities that come with them. A father’s devotion to his children. Provision to our partners. Stewardship of our communities. But it cannot be all this in life. We can set aside time to play with it. 

If you can’t buy the Mercedes Benz that you dream of, book a test drive. Feel what it will be like the day you do own one. Check yourself into a nice hotel for a night. Enjoy the meal, soft bedding, have an early evening drink or tea in the restaurant. Watch life happening around you. 

Play with it a little bit and try a new haircut. Tell your barber to surprise you. Dance at a wedding. Buy a shirt in a colour you never wear. Travel to a place where nobody knows you.

You’d have aged ten minutes by the time you finish reading this article. Time is not here to play. It gives itself every single day but ruthlessly takes from you at midnight. The day is gone. And then it’s a week. A month. Then one day you’re looking at photos and videos of the friends and family who are no longer here with us.

The passage of time makes the voices of the people we loved and lost become distant echoes. Yours, too, will become one some day. 

So play with it a little bit today. You’ll see how life becomes larger than your bills, struggles and success. As a man, you have to actively pursue your happiness because if there’s anything about us, we often get played when we switch off.