A couple of weeks ago, my dear sister Anne Muiruri who lives upstairs on this page made an attempt to assault the confidence and the position of men in society by claiming that men should be magnanimous enough to ask for directions.
Now let me unpack it for her step by step, as if we are peeling an onion.
First, men are leaders and because they are leaders they have to keep leading.
Merely because a man may have missed a turn or two en route to the destination does not mean he got lost or he is visionless.
It basically means he has picked a circuitous route to the destination.
I come from a pastoralist community and cows are sacred to us. Well... not in the Hindu way of things, but you get the drift.
Our wealth is in how large your herd is and herd often has one cow that is the leader.
You as the shepherd only need to communicate to this cow and the rest follow suit. We have a saying that says if the leader limps, the cows can never reach the green pasture.
Secondly, men are protectors. We did not grab that power it was handled over to us by the almighty! So when we are together on a journey, we must be quite alert so that we do not come short of that expectation. So how can we ask for directions when we are driving a new shiny car?
Wouldn’t a thug send you to the wrong direction just to waylay you and do all sorts of havoc? Remember that son or daughter who since birth knows that dad knows everything? Why would we be careless enough to let down the little kid? We cannot bring the child’s entire world crashing by being as insensitive to his or her world view.
If the kid knows dad is the strongest so be it, if the kid believes dad is the most intelligent, so be it and if the kid believes dad knows everything, it’s his responsibility to ensure that the child does not get convoluted ideas about the power.
So there is another valid reason we cannot ask directions when our children are in the car, yet they spend the whole week at school bragging how my dad knows everything.
Sorry, I know this is a family rag. So we have to speak in tongues when it comes to some issues.
It is generally bragged in the bars that men who would ordinarily get lost and start asking for directions is in itself an admittance to weakness.
If you can fail to use you God-given compass to navigate a simple journey, can the clan rest their hopes on you to bear the clan a son?
How would you get directions to your woman’s truth north? Who wants the reputation of always getting lost in the wilderness?
Let us just say that men never get lost in a journey, they just have alternative ways of finding the route to their destination!
Their sixth sense has a strong app for ‘Finding my route’ and only when they have not upgraded to newer versions that they get slight difficulties enroute, but eventually they get there, you know.
No woman has been left in the forest because her man did not stop to ask for directions.
Remember the mantra ‘Better late than never’, it was coined for men who lived to the true ethos of playing it safe and ensuring they figure out the direction to their destination without abdicating their role to third parties. Now you know...