“A life without cause is a life without effect.” – Barbarella
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Joe Lewis
“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.” – William Feather
A few weeks ago, I wrote about taking up more space and what that might look like. Today I want to talk about a real-life example of that. Back home in South Africa, Jeremy Mansfield was a radio announcer and television presenter. He passed away recently from cancer. To me he was a living example of what it looks like when someone takes up more space.
Mansfield was probably most famous for spearheading a weekday radio breakfast show in Johannesburg, called The Rude Awakening. It was his brainchild. The intention with the show was to give morning commuters a relief from the day-to-day stress of living in Johannesburg. Mansfield and his team committed to never discussing crime on their show, to give listeners a break from the endless reporting on crime.
He created a show where they played great music and had hilarious conversations instead of serious discussions about the crime and violence in South Africa. It was a safe haven for listeners where people had permission to be silly and naughty. So, if you chose to listen to The Rude Awakening on weekday mornings, you would spend your commute laughing and singing and get to work in a good mood.
On the day Mansfield passed away, the news headlines read: “A light has gone out in the world and a giant “oke” has fallen.” (“Oke”, for those of you who are not South African, means “guy”). And this was so true. Mansfield was larger than life in so many ways. And I want to share with you what I observed from how he lived his life and the impact he had.
Firstly, Mansfield was not “mainstream attractive”. And what struck me most was how comfortable he was in his own body and how he accepted himself with so much humour and humility. He once did a billboard campaign where he posed naked as Botticelli’s Venus. It was hilarious and spoke to his confidence and acceptance of himself.
One of his close friends, and his co-presenter on The Rude Awakening for many years, Samantha Cowen, described him as follows: “Jeremy lived large, he didn’t know how to do small. He loved hard, laughed loud, and managed to combine mischief and mayhem with heart and soul. The city was brighter and lighter with him on the airwaves, he changed lives every day. When he wasn’t raising millions for charity, he was raising fresh hell!”
For some, Mansfield may have come across as too much, because you simply could not ignore his presence. He wasn’t a calm guy. He could express his anger as much as his sense of humour and he and Samantha and the other broadcasters on his team would debate and argue on radio. He was real. He as authentic and he spoke his truth as he saw it, even if it upset others.
This to me speaks of his integrity. Integrity, as I’m using the word here, has no moral connotation. It is about being honest about what is true and real for you. It’s having the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s having the courage to say no when no is what you mean and to only say yes when yes is what you really mean. It’s saying the hard things and being vulnerable with those you love and care for, so that they always know where they stand with you. It’s following through on commitments, not because you feel obligated to do so, but because you are a person of your word, and because your word means something.
In an interview a month before he died, Mansfield shared, “I think that a lot of people have a misperception about me … though I came across as arrogant and any other harsh word, I want people to know I was a really compassionate, really caring, fairly funny, humane person who did make people laugh. Hopefully they can say ‘I now admit he did make me laugh, he’s guilty your honour’.”
That statement speaks to the kind of person Mansfield was. He had such deep humility. He was aware of his “flaws”, of his own humanity, and he was clear on what his calling was – i.e., to make people laugh. He embraced that calling fully. And he wasn’t inaccurate when he described himself as “really compassionate and really caring”. Mansfield a was a big man with a “huge soft heart” as Samantha Cowen would say.
Mansfield set up an annual Christmas Wish charity drive, aimed at helping needy community members to pay school fees, pay for hospital expenses, and buy groceries. In South Africa, many people live below the poverty line, and his efforts at helping people pay school fees, buy groceries, and pay their hospital expenses, had a huge impact. He was also involved in the Hear for Life Trust, which was set up to do cochlear implants for the needy, and the patron of The Sunflower Fund. The Sunflower Fund fights blood diseases like Leukaemia through the recruitment of stem cell donors and maintaining a registry of potential donors committed to helping anyone in need of a life-saving stem cell transplant. Mansfield was also an honorary member of the South African Chef’s Association, and he even wrote a cooking book called Zhoozsh! Faking It, which won in the South African sector of the Gourmand Cookbook Awards.
An impressive list of accomplishments perhaps, and that is not what is striking about it to me. What I appreciate about the things Mansfield was passionate about, is that it aligned with how he saw himself and how he described himself in that interview. He was compassionate and caring and his actions in the world spoke of that. The things he committed himself to, were directly aligned to his core purpose and the things he valued most in life – compassion and humour. He created himself through his words, and then lived into that.
Cowen said many people got to see and hear about his soft side over the radio, but he saved his vulnerability for a select few. She shares, “He was determined that the world be a better and shinier and funnier place, and he drove the road to that destination at 1 000 miles an hour with no rear-view mirror, all of the rest of us clinging on for dear life!”
Jeremy Mansfield was just one man living on the Southern tip of Africa. He wasn’t extravagantly wealthy or famous. But he lived his life on purpose, with clear intention, and he impacted millions nonetheless, because he chose to make a difference in his corner of the world. It left such an impact that this fellow South African sitting on the other side of the world in Canada, is still mourning that his light has gone out in the world.
Mansfield did not hide away. He did not wait for others to take the lead. He led with a fierce loving heart and a big smile. He was determined to live full-out with no regrets, and my sense is that he did just that. He played life to win, and he left it all on the court in big ways.
And his life is an invitation to all of us to stop worrying what others think, to take up the calling of our hearts, and to live your own version of playing full out on the court, whatever that may look like. You never know whose life you will impact in profound ways.
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2022). Larger Than Life. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/larger_than_life/
- Breytenbach, C. (2022). I AM: The two most powerful words in the world. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/i_am_the_two_most_powerful_words/