You’re Never Too Old – Or Young – To Mess Up
Men used to wait until their flag was flying at half-mast and their head was balding. Modern day mid-life crisis is no longer the preserve of the retiree or 50-something year old man. It’s creeping up on men at the peak of their powers, youthful and full of so much promise.
We tend to want more in life. Even when you’re sitting in that chair, in the house you built, with a family or woman you love, we want to add to it. A goat. Swimming pool. Solar lights. Anything.
We can blame it on wanting to see what was beyond our caves even though we had a freshly captured impala, some fruit and vegetables stocked away. We got bored, ventured further and made the unforgivable discovery that Mopani worms were edible.
It’s in our nature to want to see more. As boys, we broke our toys apart to figure out how they worked. Others disemboweled the family cat or neighbour’s dog then later became Manchester United fans and engineers at ZESCO. Or both.
We wanted to know and have things beyond what we had strived for or been handed to us. And this nasty streak never leaves us, does it?
It’s where the self-sabotage comes in for modern man. He will work hard to build a career only to throw it in the bin for fraud or arriving drunk on the job. No need for a mid-life crisis.
He’ll have healthy children under one roof then choose to father two or more under the roof of a boarding house or furnished apartment.
iterate and well-traveled men can enjoy relatively good health but spiral into ruinous addiction to alcohol or drugs because that’s how all the deals are getting done in Lusaka or Kitwe.
He has a decent and reliable salary hitting his account every month but decides he prefers it to be massively deducted to pay for child support to three different women.
A man can never be too old or wealthy to mess up in life. And that man could easily be you when you lose the discernment and discipline to keep things as they are or improve them rationally.
After courting a woman, flying up the career ladder, building a business, finding some financial stability and relative wellness, manhood becomes a second childhood for modern man.
And that’s why those shiny new friends are to be kept at arm’s length. Like women that find you attractive only in the latter stages of your life. Investments that offer you more money at once than you’ve made since birth.
Wanting a car that is the fastest you’ve ever driven is the boy inside you begging to rediscover your zest for life. He’ll revive you, hand you a new lease of life and have you sharing a nightclub dance floor with the nearly dressed Gen Z daughters of your friends.
One hopes, as a man, you’ve already made peace with the boy before he wages his war on you.
