BE A MAN!

"Be a man! My brother, and endure it!..."

"Why can't you be a man?..."

"You are a man, you shouldn't show any form of weaknesses..."

"Be a man, Men don't cry out. They endure..."

"Be a man, men are not vulnerables, they are strong people. They don't cry..."

The Be-A-Man Syndrome has in one way or the other rendered many men useless in our society today. They no longer behave like men. They have learned how to bottle up so much things in their hearts because the society forbids them from expressing themselves as they want to as men, because their wives told them that they are men and being a man entails that they don't have to express themselves as they should. Because their mothers said they are men. So therefore, they have learnt to bottle up so many things in their hearts. They don't talk but look. They don't react in most cases but look.They walk away many times. They stay silent or cried within without acting. They have learnt the language of leaving, leaving the house to find a more secured place to wallow in self pity and pains against themselves. You see why we have many men in the Beer Parlors today. Some of them are running away from the troubles at home.

Some men don't know how to express themselves anymore. They keep to themselves those things they should have shared with their wives, sisters, mothers or friends. Do you know why? They are afraid of what those people may say to them in the process, they are afraid that these people would call them weak men — Or they will assume they don't know how real men behave or what makes up a man. Our society has made us believe that real men don't express themselves in some certain way. They made us believe that men are muted actors and they must play the roles society has assigned to them without asking questions of how, what, why and where they should start acting.

Some men have learnt the act of counting their wives offenses in the heart. They don't tell their wives how they have offended them until it has gotten to their nerves and that is when they react. And when they react to that, society blame them asking why they were not man enough to condon their wives' behaviors. You must be a man even when the whole world is against you. You must be a man even when your wife tries to strangle you alive. You must be a man even when your neighbor grabs your manhood to the street. You must be a man even when some women gang rape you and you run to the police station to complain but the police men on duty laugh at you and describe to you how you enjoy it. You just have to be a man. You must be a man in a gullable country like ours. you must be a man when a woman slaps you in the public. You must not react even when you are innocent. You are only allowed to wallow in pains or better still walk away from the scene. Nobody cares how subjective and objective your reaction might be but they all expect you to endure as a man from some abusive situations. You must be a man to be able to satisfy your woman on bed. Yes, you must be a man to make her cum and scream out loud in the bed. Even when you are not satisfied, you have to be a man to endure your pains of not being satisfied because nobody cares about you as long as it is sex between you and your wife or girl friend.

Sometimes, society still complain about your performance in bed, how you have suddenly become a one minute man. Why must you complain about a mere sex experience? Are you not a man? A man don't need to get satisfied often. They suddenly forgot that Sex is an embodiment of two parties, it shouldn’t be objectified, Sex is whole, it is a union,
It takes more than the man and the woman coming together and the man penetrating into the woman. Orgasm that comes through sex is excitement and excitement only. But the love between the man and the woman is deeper. The two should be satisfied during their sex experince and Shouldn't be one party thing.

Besides, you must learn to be a man when you are cheated by anyone by swallowing the pains. You must not let out your bitterness to anyone, even your mother or sisters must not hear of it because if they do, they would still tell you to be a man and endure whatsoever that is troubling you. Although some of these people are still considerate, they still Understand the pains men harbour within. An enabling environment is another factor after your mindset. But this Environment becomes intoxicated when everything around you is teaching you how to be a man. You find it difficult to positively change your mindset, couple that with an enabling environment.

However, this expression has made some men to loss their communication skils at home. They find it difficult to have a five minutes conservation with their wife. They have so many things in their heart hurting them but the will power to express these things, they lack. We can't overemphasize the fact that many men of this generation can't wait to get of the marriage they are right now because they don't see any future in it. They don't see why they should be in that relationship or marriage because they have lost the ability to communicate their demands to their wives, so, they bottle up many things because they don't want to be tag as weak men who can't be like other men out there. A few of them have the guts but majority of men have lost the guts to express the way they feel to their wives. They have learnt the act of keeping quiet for something they should have contributed because they must behave like men the society expected them to be.

Finally, men suffer alot in the society because they are not expressive like the women. Women can talk as much as they can, they can fight, argue and nag but men have silenced their emotions and feelings because of the expression: BE A MAN. In the nearest future, when we will start asking what has become of our husbands, sons and fathers, we should be able to remember that it started when we made them muted actors that must act the role we assigned to them.

©John Chizoba Vincents
#LiquidWords.

The truth is being a man is no easy feat. Men have built societies and struggled through hard times. If men did not suffer in times past then the modern male will not find life so easy. Does anybody have an idea how many lives were lost in the progress to international plane travel?

Men, just like women, come in all shapes, personalities and sizes. Since nobody has to hunt and kill meals anymore there’s the luxury of men expressing themselves in other ways especially artistically. Men cry nowadays, bleed, take care of children, help around the house and build their partners as equals. Women are spoiled for choice and as usual complain about the situation. It’s all they know how to do. With men being around more than often the women complain even louder.