My dear Jack, how many times have you heard the expression, be a man! “Be a man!” is the picture of a young man about to cry over a situation but being urged to toughen up, stiffen up and not let out the tears. You’ve probably heard the expression since you were a kid. If you got into a scuffle, you were encouraged not to cry, to be a man! If you went to hospital and the injection proved particularly painful and evil, and you felt like crying, chances are your father would have said to you, be a man! These examples seem to create the impression that being a man is the ability to absorb pain, or to stand up to someone.
We were essentially taught manhood is about increasing pain threshold or being brave. But that’s not the full picture of manhood. Yes, if you are an actor on TV, your TV girlfriend will probably see you as a “man” for being able to stand up to the bully on the beach. Same in comics too. Only that life hardly presents those TV and comics scenarios. They’ll therefore qualify as exceptions if they ever happen. The rules of civility to which all adults subscribe for example precludes one from getting into altercations. The idea of two men fighting in the street may be something we relish in a western but in the real world it gets you fired from work.
In the real world fighting on the street makes your girlfriend run away from you. How many women truly want to date a street brawler? How many women want to date a guy who pulverises another man? Some, may be, but majority will be scared of such a guy for obvious reasons. And so it behoves us to re-examine the definition of manhood given these analyses.
We do know manhood is tied to responsibility. A man is responsible. He’s responsible to his family, he’s responsible to his employer, he’s responsible to his local community, and he’s responsible to society. You can’t be a MAN if you’re irresponsible. It will be most historical to see a wife praising her husband for being irresponsible with his obligations. How interesting it will be to see a wife praising her man for his inability to pay rent. So we do know manhood is associated with responsibility. The shirking of responsibility cannot make you a man, in the real world. That of course knocks out the definition of manhood based on the size of genitalia. Yes, in some men’s fashion magazine… But in the real world responsibility defineth the man.
There are three capacities you need to acquire as a man. These apart from provisioning for your family.
The first capacity you must acquire as a man is the ability to take decisions. It’s closely allied with being decisive. If you can’t take decision society will be hard pressed to call you a man. A man takes decisions, a man is decisive. Which means he’s ready to take responsibility for the outcome of his decisions. It’s what manhood is about. You take decisions, you bear responsibility.
The second capacity you require as a man is the ability and inclination to complete things. There are many people who start stuff who get distracted along the way or just abandon the stuff. You’ll see a litany of uncompleted projects all over their life. They waste resources, lock up equity. They’re business risks. They abandon ideas, can’t complete projects. In other words, manhood requires discipline. You’ve got to be able to focus and discipline yourself to complete tasks and projects. If you have a reputation for not completing tasks and projects, and other people have to step in to help you out especially if their interests are affected, they’ll grumble about you no end behind your back. You’ll be known as a frustrating entity. You’ll frustrate everyone, give everyone headache on assignments. Those complaints are another form of expression for, he’s not a man! Means you must be helped along like a child or nothing will be achieved. You require constant monitoring.
If you want to be known as a man you must be able to run with stuff, take advantage of opportunities presented by life, be able to complete tasks, require no handholding. You must be trusted to get things done. In other words, a man must have execution capacity on projects. He must be trusted to execute an assignment.
The third capacity you have to have if you want to be respected as a man is the ability to plan. If you can’t plan you can hardly execute a turnkey project. In planning you have to pay attention to what is called “dependencies.” Dependencies are stuff that must be accomplished before other stuff. If you want to paint a new house for example, what they call “screeding” will be a dependency. You prepare the wall first before applying paint. If you don’t take care of that dependency you can’t paint. And so in your planning you make a proviso for time, money and human resources for “screeding”. If you don’t you’ll exacerbate your partners at the painting juncture. The other side to planning is, when a unit of a project is being executed you must ask what next. You don’t wait until that module is completed, you plan ahead.
In other words you must do forward thinking, forward planning, anticipatory planning. That capacity is associated with manhood. Anticipatory planning prevents unnecessary delay on projects, it prevents the spiralling of costs. Planlessness on the other hand torpedoes other people’s plans. If you’re getting married for example, you should identify dependencies – what are those things that need to be accomplished before major items can be executed. That’s one side of the equation. The other side is forward planning – what next? For example, what’s going to happen after the wedding? Where are you going to live? How are you going to provide for your family? You must plan ahead.
If you don’t demonstrate capacity to plan ahead your woman will hardly respect you. It means you don’t give thought to things, you believe things will take care of themselves. You’ll be a frustrating partner. A man plans ahead. A man is responsible. A man focuses and exercises discipline. If you don’t exercise these three capacities you’ll hardly be called a man. These are real world capacities not TV script ideas. You need them to succeed in the real world. By the way real men cry. Only not so often. Or society will wonder. As they often wonder.
You need to put your act together. You want to be dependable, you want to be reliable, and you want to be trustworthy. The engorged size of genitalia may be good for adverts for briefs, but it’s hardly the definition of manhood in the real world. Manhood is spelt “r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-i-l-i-t-y.” And don’t blame the women for wanting real men. No one wants to carry the pail in a relationship. A relationship shouldn’t be a burden. By its very definition a relationship is a contributory scheme. Each party brings something to the table. It’s up to the parties how they divvy up responsibilities but you don’t go into a relationship empty-handed. You can’t go into a relationship fully expectant and non-contributory. That’s a demand and supply relationship. It’s why you need to sort yourself out as a man.
In a traditional form of relationship a man has certain responsibilities. Of course outside that paradigm the rules can get creative. You want to be respected in social circles. You don’t want anyone thinking you’re a kept boy. You won’t earn much respect as that. If you want respect therefore do the things that earn respect. But if you want to coast along then you shouldn’t complain your girlfriend disrespects you. How won’t she? You bring nothing to the table. You live off her.
Remember those three capacities: the ability to take a decision, the ability to plan and the ability to execute. You must have these as a man.
I wish you the best in your journey of manhood.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com
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