Mantalk: As a woman worries about biological clock, the man’s financial clock is ticking

So that’s it then? This year has already gone by? The year 2024 is already over! I am looking forward to 2025! Shock therapy aside, the problem with starting the year with me is that I get a chance to remind you that time is running out, despite what the “positivity influencers” will have you believe.

In fact, I like it even more so because 2023’s word of the year, according to the Oxford Dictionary, was “rizz”. It means “sexual appeal” or “charm” and is derived from charisma, but there is nothing charismatic about a 40-something-year-old man using the word ‘rizz’ in a sentence. Aibu.

Shadows and dust, as Proximo says in The Gladiator, are all that men and women are. It’s what we do in life that’s forever engraved on our headstone and legacy, so make it count. I have been thinking lately about this because surely as the clock keeps turning, so do our dreams keep fading.

At some point, you wake up and realise that maybe you are not going to be a billionaire after all, that Halle Berry won’t reply to your Instagram DM and give you a scion, and that pain in your joints is not because you’ve been working out too hard, but is actually early onset arthritis.

Anger is there, certainly. It is one inch below the gloss of rationale and benevolence. It is understandable. The wide-eyed, curious boy you once were is shedding off his skin to reveal the crushed-by-life hard man, dead men walking, like a city in ruins.

You wanted to be famous and you wanted to be wealthy and you wanted to be loved and you wanted to win. You wanted to do it all, and it was the making of you, and it was the breaking of you.

I have this hypothesis that I have been playing around with—about the different time clocks for men and women. While women have a biological clock, men in my experience work with a financial clock.

I haven’t been a woman, naturally, so I’ll share the men's perspective. And it’s simple, men need to have their finances in order before committing to anything. And sometimes, time is running out, and the money isn’t right yet.

Because while women see the opportunity in relationships, men see the responsibility. And you know what responsibility means? Bills. And that financial clock is ticking, and the man doesn’t see a way out. Can I take care of her and myself? Where are we going to live? How are we going to live? And in the background, tick tock. Tick tock.

And that’s when the dreams start to die. Because then a man has to give it all up to make his money. I am not saying I approve of what some of my brothers in Kilimani would do when it comes to buying soap and going to the cleaners for a good wash, but I understand. Never let it be said then that a man is not a success object, because that’s all he is.

As a very online millennial, that means I get to livestream people’s lives; and again, a middle finger to the positivity influencers, but despite what they say, it is purely impossible if not foolish to bury your head in the sand.

I dare offer a different kind of pill, that instead of pretending you are magnanimous, you should compare yourself, and stack yourself against your friends, because only then will you get a distinct barometer of how you are doing. No, you cannot identify as a ‘success.’ Life doesn’t work that way. Success doesn’t work that way. I identify as the correct person in this argument.

For some time now I have been talking to someone’s daughter about death, how it will feel like, and whether I’d prefer to know the when or the how. For me, that was easy. I would rather know the how, and hopefully if I can get to make some adjustments because I have a few ideas.

I think if I knew the when, I would live my life in a rush, I would want to do everything within that time frame, simply because I know the Grim Reaper is lurking. See, there is beauty in the unknown. Knowing is not a gift, but a punishment. But since we already know death is coming, that’s why I prefer to know how.

 I want to go out in white underwear, preferably having stocked up with nyama choma and beer because heaven will only serve milk and honey, which does not feel very inclusive, what about us who are lactose intolerant?

I bring this to your attention because I believe that most men don’t want to know when they will make it, but how to make it. They want to know that their efforts have been worthwhile, that the rat race wasn’t in vain, that the dreams of their youth weren’t foreshadowing the nightmares of aging. Isn’t it funny, how the things you once yearned for now haunt you?

The elders say, when a man sees his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. Because we know that nothing ever works out. Life is about coping with stuff that doesn’t do what it says on the tin. The sooner you embrace this reality, the sooner you will make peace with it and start to thrive despite it, or perhaps somewhat poetically, because of it.

May this year carry favour for every man who shows up in the arena, for his family, for his friends, for himself. May God, whatever you perceive him to be, be on your side. May the land respond to your tills.

And crucially, may the clock ever tick on your side. Like we say on this page: Let the young man in his desperation go out and hunt. If he kills the elephant, his poverty ends. If the elephant kills him, his poverty ends. Blessed 2024 brethren.