It’s Just a Film: My Cancer Journey and Awakening to What Really Matters

It is not necessary to have a career. What we have is a job, and our job is our spiritual mission in life.

I was sitting outdoors the other day, enjoying my pizza well done at the bottom, very crispy, and the kind that you can fold in half like an envelope. I savored every bit of it. Not too much cheese, it was warm in every corner at every bite. I enjoyed every bit of it because it was not always that way.

There was a time when I could not eat pizza. You’re probably wondering where this is heading. Well, I’ll take you back to Malibu, California, where a friend of mine invited me to her place. She showed me around the property that she was renting. It was a carriage house behind a larger house on an estate. She took me to a labyrinth with rocks laying in a circle. That circle was a Memorial for the son of the owners of that property. The son had died at a relatively young age. I believe he was in his thirties. He died of cancer.

I didn’t know what to make of this. I’ve never known anybody who died of cancer. There was something very sweet, beautiful, and sad about the whole thing. It’s one of those things where you kind of ask yourself, who was this person and why, why are they not here anymore? Why are they not alive? Why are they not on this earth? Who were they? Who was this person? I kind of took it all in. I asked her a little bit about this guy. She said that he was a film producer or a filmmaker. He was highly, highly ambitious and determined to get his film, his show, or whatever it was going. The stress of running himself that hard to make a movie, she believed killed him.

She believed it was the stress that gave him cancer. He went through some treatments, what it was, I don’t remember. He was at stage four. Then as soon as he got well, well, enough to move around and do things, he started the whole thing over again, the whole pattern of overworking himself, and her observation was that it was this aggressive approach to life of so many filmmakers, so many people in Hollywood, and it’s not just Hollywood. It’s many industries, but particularly in Hollywood, people literally sacrifice themselves to the medium, with total disregard for their wellbeing, their sanity and morals sometimes, and their health.

Very rapidly, his cancer came back raging because he was determined to get back on it and keep pushing through it, you know, gotta get this done, gotta get this thing made. I know that feeling very well, by the way. It’s a little bit of a possession. If you ask me, a temporary form of insanity. Well, maybe not temporary for many people because it’s a very ego-driven obsession in this race to meet the demands and the pace of getting stuff produced and the stress involved in making movies or shows.

When his cancer came back, raging, it took him, it took his life. I remember her saying to me, it’s just a film. It’s just a film.

For some reason, Death doesn’t seem to be that important when you’re willing to risk everything to achieve your goals.

I’m telling the story to remind myself and to remind everybody around me, that it’s just a film. It’s just a film. It’s just, it’s just whatever it is. Fill in the blank. But it is just that and losing sight of yourself in anything to the degree that it takes over your mind. Not only is it a form of insanity, but it can kill you. For some reason, Death doesn’t seem to be that important when you’re willing to risk everything to achieve your goals. Well, this happened back in, I’d say what? 2014 or ‘15, we toured her property. It was very nice. There were chickens, there were horses, it was very pleasant. I had thought nothing of it, nothing.

In 2019, I was experiencing some very unusual symptoms that were constantly misdiagnosed. you could probably tell by the way I’m describing everything where this is going because I ended up with cancer.

I cannot explain to you what it feels like to be told that you have cancer. Suddenly you are an alien on an alien planet, and you’re one of them. You’re no longer a person. You are now a cancer patient. I cannot tell you not only how traumatic the experience is to find out that you have this disease., but what it does to you on a very surreal level where it feels like you’re in a dream, that it’s an out-of-body experience, that it’s actually somebody else. It’s not you. Well, I’ll tell you something crazy. I was one of the healthiest people you could ever meet. Perfect health. Never saw a doctor. Well, I can’t say never. But I never had surgeries, never broke anything. Never been hospitalized. Perfect, perfect health. I could live. I did live without healthcare for a very long time until they made it illegal. But that’s another story. But, yeah, I won’t go into the whole details of what I went through, but I will say that it was an awakening. I had to journey through all the experiences a cancer patient would go through.

Often, in my cancer group meetings, I would sit there listening to people, their stories, and what they were going through. When they got around to me, I shut down. Intentionally shut down because I didn’t consider myself a cancer patient by label, by identity, or by consciousness. I would outrightly say to them, Hey, I don’t know what to tell you guys, because I don’t feel like a cancer patient. This is very new to me. It’s another planet. It’s a whole other world, here. And I am among the Dying. It’s surreal.

I went through all the procedures. I’m talking about the meetings, the examinations, you know, those rooms they take you in where they break the news to you with the tissue box, always strategically place for the inevitable outcome. The surgeries, the process, the experience of going into an elevator and coming out to the cancer unit floor. Wow. I’m gonna actually walk down this hallway and announce myself to the front desk that I’m there to get treated for cancer, or waking up after surgery on the cancer floor for patients recovering and dying.

People say you should never take each day for granted. All of that doesn’t mean anything until you have the experience yourself.

These are some of the initial shocks of the experience. It’s much deeper than that. I don’t want to get into the horrors or the medical stuff. But I’ll tell you one thing though that is related to my pizza story, which is that many things come to light when you go through this. There are little, little things that we take for granted that people say, Oh, you know, you should never take life for granted. You should never take each day for granted. All of that doesn’t mean anything until you have the experience yourself, and I don’t wish it upon anybody.

I feel strange talking about not taking things for granted, but I want to share what it’s like to not take things for granted, what it really means to be fully awake, fully alive, not knowing what fully means until you are deprived. Because when you go through chemotherapy, you can’t eat, you cannot eat. The nausea is overbearing. Your taste completely changes. The worst part is your digestive system becomes a cemetery. You don’t hear anything moving down there. It’s not working because the chemo is going through your body and it’s supposedly killing the cancer. I say, supposedly, because it’s very unsophisticated by killing everything else. I don’t like to use the word killing because I had to erase that terminology from my body and my mind energetically in order to heal. You cannot heal yourself if you’re thinking about the opposite, which is killing, but I can say that word now because I’m through it and I am beyond it. I’m grateful.

I didn’t have it as bad as other people, because I had incredible divine intervention with the resources and the health that came to me to provide me with the alternative health that made it possible for me to eat, made it possible to repair my digestive system. It made it possible for my body to heal on its own while the stuff is killing me.

I’m keeping this short because there’s a lot more to say about this, but through it all, one of the most amazing things that I appreciated from this experience is eating. Sure. People get dental work now, then they can eat for a week or whatever. Or there are certain things that inhibit us from eating occasionally. But something like going through chemo really makes you appreciate your body. Number one, the nourishment and the luxury of enjoying food, the life that food gives to you, that you never even think about twice. When you eat, how life-giving it is. The bonus is we can eat a lot of junk, right?

The bonus is we can eat pizza. Because pizza is not what you eat when you are ill, when your body isn’t working, your digestive system needs a whole lot of hydration and foods that it can process, not flour and cheese.

You know that you’ve been resurrected when you can eat a pizza any time, any day, and as much as you want.

When you go through these things, you can’t really see the other side of the tunnel. You can’t see the other side. When your hair falls out, you’ve been told that it will grow back, but you can’t see it. It’s just not your reality. I can spend a whole day talking about hair by the way and what it means to have hair and what hair represents and what it means when people talk about, oh, it’s just hair. I can talk about that. But today we’re gonna talk about pizza.

You know that you survived cancer and much worse, including death. You know that you’ve been resurrected when you can eat a pizza any time, any day, and as much as you want. There’s a joy in eating pizza that you have when you are allowed to live twice. The first time for me was before cancer and the second time was overcoming it. So, pizza takes on an entirely new meaning,

But what is really the story about pizza? Well, in terms of perspective on life, in terms of career, whatever that means.

I’m gonna take a little aside to talk about career first. There’s no such thing as a career. It’s something that we invented to prove that we’re doing something important that fits into a societal concept, that our identity is wrapped around a career. Well, do babies have career? Do flowers have a career? Do birds have career? Do gorillas? Ancient civilizations? Did they have careers? No, they did not have careers. What the fuck is career? That’s a whole other discussion.

Listen, I understand what a career is, but it is not necessary to have a career. What we have is a job, and our job is our spiritual mission in life. Our soul’s purpose. That’s our job. That’s not our career.

Well, how does pizza fit into all of this? How does pizza tie into this whole filmmaking business or the fill-in-your-blanks (whatever business that is), that you’re willing to sacrifice everything. You’re willing to slave and work overtime. over, overtime to exhaust yourself to attain something that is so important, that it doesn’t really matter if you sleep. It doesn’t really matter if you eat. It doesn’t really matter if it makes you ill. It doesn’t even matter if it gives you cancer. Because on my cancer journey, I have discovered that people will not rest when they get cancer. They’re going to plow through and go to work because they don’t wanna sit around in stillness, being with themselves and healing. So they keep pushing until the cancer returns essentially. They wonder why they’re having a recurrence. Well, I can’t explain recurrence. I have my own theories about it, but it would be too self-righteous for me to talk about recurrence. I do know that it certainly doesn’t help when you’re not getting the big picture. I also know that, Hey, if it’s your time, it’s your time. They say you’re gonna die of something, obviously.

What have you got to say anyway, if you’re dead?

How does pizza story ties into the whole Malibu experience is the perspective? We never think it’s gonna happen to us. We don’t wish it on our enemies, even though some people do.  Today, everybody gets cancer. Right? What is it? It feels like one out of every five. But, you know, it doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s pretty damn serious and it’s a wakeup call and it’s a matter of how you handle it.

For me, I saw cancer as a gift. It was traumatic. Yes, it was. But it was a gift because in the end, it gave me perspective. It also gave me longevity, ironically enough. I feel fortunate to get it early on, rather than much later in life where I might be too elderly to survive it. I feel like it gave me this in advance so that I can do my job right.

This is what that Malibu experience was about. I was getting a life lesson. From God from life, from Spirit, showing me how to do it right. Now that a blessing or what? That’s if you’re willing to observe and learn. That experience at the labyrinth had instilled something in me early on to remind me, Hey, something’s coming around the corner. You’re gonna be doing it differently, right? You’re not gonna be disrespecting your body, right? You’re not gonna plow through the respect of your health plow through your life, over something as stupid as a film, because what have you got to say anyway if you’re dead?

Now when I eat pizza, I eat it with perspective and I eat it with joy, pure joy, because it actually means something to eat pizza because I can, because I can. What does that mean? Some people say because I can, so fuck it all. I’ll drink myself to death because I can, I’m just gonna do it until I die until I kill over, because I can.

Or you can say, because I can. Because I am so incredibly grateful to have perspective. What is more important than your job (or fill in the blank)? What is more important is life. Yes. Life, life may mean nothing to a lot of people only because people die all the time. Or they watch a lot of violent films. Even though it’s so-called fake it’s desensitizing. The value and the meaning of life are carnage all around us if you look at it that way. Even as more and more people die of diseases, we sort of get used to this idea that life is, you know, meaningless. Not all of us feel that way, but subconsciously we do because if we really, really, really cherish life, we would really be enjoying our pizza.

Love,
Ji Strangeway

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