Are Men Born or Made?

I concluded last week’s article by linking the leadership problems we have to the breakdown in the family structure. Men who are not able to lead themselves are not leading their families’ right and ultimately each dysfunctional family becomes the breeding ground for dysfunctional leaders of tomorrow. We may send our children to great schools under great teachers but the truth is that their values will ultimately be dominated by what they see at home.

I heard in the news that highbrow areas have become hot spots for illegal drugs. One reason for this could be the fact that a lot of children are now being raised by the house helps and as such develop the same values that the children of the house helps have. This is a major danger for us as a society. The question is, where did we go wrong?

At the risk of being accused of not being gender sensitive, I will dedicate my article today to men. Of course we all know that the fact that you are born male does not make you a man. Males are born  in the labour room but men are made through intelligent, diligent and smart labour. Smart labour is the labour that considers all dimensions of life and not just the ability to make money. Unfortunately we live in a generation of busy men and broken homes, smart gadgets and dumb heads.  If men can be repositioned then families will be restored and the leadership issues of our continent will be addressed.

When you have women and children lining up behind and being led by men who don’t know where they are going what do we expect? When men are more inclined to buy a beer than a book what do you expect? When men would rather be in a bar than at home with their families, what do you expect? When at home the men would rather spend more time on their phones talking and chatting with people a whole world away than having meaningful conversations with their wives and children, what do you expect?

It is one thing to leave an inheritance for children but a totally different thing to leave a heritage. No inheritance can survive a weak heritage. Heritage is what ultimately defines the value of the inheritance. Good heritage without inheritance is always better than inheritance without heritage. We have seen people who were bequeathed large inheritances who eventually destroyed their lives yet we have seen people who were left nothing but turned out to be very successful citizens of society simply because they had a good heritage. The heritage is the mindset that is passed on to our children and it is produced by what we say and what we do.

What heritage are we passing on to our children? What mindset are we building in them? What are we teaching them? We are likely to have a generation of males in the near future who do not know how to treat their wives, who do not know how to instruct and inspire their children and who become the clueless office holders of the future.

One of the greatest cries I hear at our leadership and mentoring classes is the cry to be shown the way. Young men want direction. They want mentors. Unfortunately a lot of potential mentors are too busy to invest some of their time and wisdom in the next generation.  Think of it like this. When a fruit is ripe if it is not plucked it will get over ripe and fall to the ground. Then it gets rotten and attracts flies and becomes an environmental hazard. What started out as a blessing becomes a menace. Similarly, we have a generation of young men today who are waiting. They are ripe – ready to take the world. If we do not create time for mentoring them, they like the fruit will get over ripe and become a societal menace.

Let us not forget that no matter how good we are at preserving today, we cannot stop tomorrow from coming. What is the point in having a great present and yet have the assurance of a terrible future that could have been prevented? All we had to do was to shape the thinking of the players of that future – the youth of today. Even though inheritance cannot trump heritage, it becomes a double disaster if all we are leaving for the future is a bad inheritance coupled with a bad heritage.

Wale Akinyemi