We Did This To Each Other

It’s lost on us just how much damage we’ve done to one another’s mental health. That we’re constantly in this overt competition for whose is faster, bigger, prettier. The male ego is a dancefloor filler, where every one of us has shuffled to a tune or two. 

We like to ask each other: “Where are you now?” 

It’s never about how you are. It’s a measurement. Sizing you up. Discernment of how far you’ve made it in life, how much you’re earning, the amount of respect or derision to give you. Where have you parked? Oh, the Vitz?

But the answer to “Where are you now?” is where you were five minutes before that former high school or university mate asked. Doing what you’ve been doing to make ends meet, survive, thrive. We ask this question to put each other on a pedestal or beneath our shoes. 

You see it in the way we do it to each other. Handshake, quick glance at your outfit and shoes then maybe your car keys. But before you can check on each other’s wellbeing, here comes the status check.

What are you doing these days? There are contracts in the mines. I see you’re driving the 2021 Hilux. The latest model has better features. You still live in Chilenje? People have built houses in Ibex Hill. 

Do you remember Paul? He’s doing really well, he has a fleet of trucks now. He married Mwelwa, their children are in good schools. $15,000 per term. He’s doing really well. Oh? Okay. 

How are you, though? Hardly any interest if you’re well or been well. Just this unrelenting schlong swinging about the money being made, people we know, who’s got which tender. 

Are our lives so empty that we can only have conversations that amplify success or dismiss failure? Do we not have more under the surface of the cars we drive, houses we’ve built, schools our children go to, businesses we run or companies we work for? Is that it for us? 

We did this to each other. We were the architects of a mental health crisis and sat back to see who would break or build. See, we used to go to war together. Hunting for animals as a brotherhood. 

Now? We’re up against each other’s status. 

We think nothing of entertaining or pursuing another man’s wife. Sit on somebody’s contract because he’s not our drinking or golfing buddy. Hold an entire nation and its rivers at ransom because we don’t like each other. Especially that.

Masculinity has been beast we’ve been building and now it wants to feast. We’re paying for the many years where all we did was size each other up instead of build legacies together.

And so, we go out to compete for the showroom vehicle, plot, yellow bone woman with a one kilometre weave, business partnership with a big government official and more status symbols. 

But we have no answer for how we are.