STORY BYNkosi Johnson didn't live long, only 12 years, but this young Zulu boy who was born HIV-infected, became an AIDS activist and, in the words of Nelson Mandela, "an icon of the struggle for life."
At this beginning of the New Year, when many of us reflect on how better to live our lives, Nkosi's wisdom may clarify our resolutions and intentions.
We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love is a new book about Nkosi's life, authored by Jim Wooten, an award-winning senior correspondent for ABC News. When interviewed about the book and his relationship with Nkosi, Wooten spoke of the wars he had covered and the heroism under fire he had witnessed. "But Nkosi taught me a different kind of courage, the quiet courage to do what has to be done in the face of these absolutely overwhelming odds that he well understood. He had a mantra that stuck with me over the years since his death, which is this: Do all you can with what you can with what you have in the time you have in the place you are."
"Do all you can
with what
you can
with what
you have in the time you have
in the place
you are."The epic tragedy of the recent earthquake and tsunami sent shock waves of horror and helplessness around the world. It was also a tremulous affirmation that none of us knows how much time will be allotted to us. Nkosi knew he wouldn't live long. People who have been given diagnoses of terminal illnesses may accept that their time is short. But how do the rest of us hold dear our daily moments on earth, when we have no endpoint to punctuate their preciousness?
The philosopher Bertrand Russell said that three passions motivated his life: a longing for love, a search for knowledge, and an unbearable sympathy for the suffering of others.
Scientific evidence continues to suggest that authentic zest results not only in more happiness but also in increased health and longevity.
Long-term research projects, such as the MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging, show that men and women who are living the longest and staying active have strong networks of friends and a desire to learn new things."Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die."
Martin Seligman, the father of "positive psychology," has researched what brings authentic happiness. Our culture today advertises what Seligman calls "shortcuts to happiness," transformation through pills, drugs, and scalpel. The shortcuts he lists include chocolate, loveless sex, shopping, and television. Trying to take shortcuts to joy and comfort leads to disastrous consequences, Seligman says. "Legions of people in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually" because they fail to exercise personal strengths and virtues and thus don't feel entitled to good feelings. "Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die."
Seligman's conclusions from his research are supported by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest and most thorough psychological study of men across their entire lifetimes, a study that has been ongoing since 1939.
The data from this study show that the strengths, "mature defense mechanisms" as they are called in the study, that hold up best and bring joy right into the eighth decade and beyond are altruism, the ability to delay gratification, future-mindedness and humor.
These same conclusions held up when lower socioeconomic men and women were added to the study. Psychiatrist George Vaillant, the director of the project, concluded that "the lives of all three cohorts repeatedly demonstrated that it was social aptitude, sometimes called emotional intelligence, not intellectual brilliance or parental social class that leads to a well-adapted old age." In other words, "the language of the heart" as expressed in relating to others, is more important to aging well than left-brain rationality.
The "real" or authentic self, the data suggest, gets expressed when we exercise what Seligman calls our signature strengths and what Vaillant identifies as "mature" coping styles. They are akin to what Bertrand Russell called the three passions of his life. Signature strengths and mature coping styles serve us when life plays hard ball or deals us an exceptionally bad hand, as it did to Nkosi and as it will to every one of us at some point in our lives.
It falls to each of us to discover our own signature strengths, our authentic selves, and to use them as, Nkosi did, to "do all you can with what you can with what you have in the time you have in the place you are." It's a formula not only for a Happy New Year but a happy life.
UPDATED: 1-25-2005
Editorial Board | Legal Disclaimer | Privacy & Security | Contact Us
©2000-2006 Office of Institutional Advancement, UT-Houston
Dr. Blair Justice is professor emeritus of psychology at UT School of Public Health and the author of several books. His wife, Dr. Rita Justice is a psychologist in private practice in Houston.
See Drs. Justice also at:
Add fiber to your diet... slowly
Dietary fiber is versatile and talented. It assists in discouraging a long list of woes: constipation, hemorrhoids, heart disease, diabetes, bad cholesterol and certain cancers.
Foods such as apples, berries, oranges, beans, broccoli, bran, multigrain breads and cereals should be added slowly into your diet, followed by an increase in fluid intake. Eventually you want to work up to 4 ½ cups of high fiber foods a day.
Otherwise, you might find yourself feeling more bloated, gassy or experiencing stomach cramps.So, add one high-fiber food at a time about a week apart. Increase your water intake (which includes unsweetened teas, diet sodas, juice) to eight glasses a day to help the fiber move through your system.
