Host of Ward Radio, Cardon Ellis shares more than a sense of humor and a researching mind, but rather, a set of ideas that can touch the hearts of us all. 

Cardon

A willingness and a propensity to go out of your way to better the lives of others, without expecting something in return. To me, that’s love.

Cardon

Human society. I’m relatively hopeful for North American society. I think we’re coming out of a 30 year slump. I think the transition from the analog to the digital era was a rough one. The world coming to grips with what the internet did was very difficult. And there was for a long time, some definite winners and some definite losers.

But we’ve been humbled as of late. So I think we’re turning back to God, turning back to family, turning back to basics. And the basics are good. So I’m hopeful for North American society as a Californian, woke is broke, which I believe is an improvement upon all of our previous cultural exports. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were some of the biggest prophets of the 20th century, or the 21st century, when they wrote the song Californication.

They were very clairvoyant, and now I think we’re going back to culturally exporting unifying things instead of divisive things.

Richard
Cardon leans on a word I asked many to define… love. Not the shallow kind that depends on approval or return, but the deeper kind that asks for nothing back. The kind that is long suffering and patient. A view not at himself, but rather a forward looking reflection that asks us all to pause. To think, for just a moment, as to what could be occurring in the life of another. To look past what he labels “Divisive Things…” and as we do, to turn toward the “Unifying Things.” Yet as he speaks, you can sense a man who has walked into the winds of pain and the light of miracles… someone who has learned to hold to purpose… even when trials fall upon him. He shares a vulnerability…

Cardon

I got leukemia. I take a daily chemo pill every day, and it kind of turns you into a little bit of a pothead. It affects your short term memory, bro. Anybody that’s gone through chemotherapy knows chemo brain or cognition, as they call it.

But yeah, you think I talk a lot. Now, you should have seen me before. Chemotherapy, bro. So when did you find out you had leukemia? February 2nd, 2019. My daughter was diagnosed with her cancer February 2nd, 2017. How did that affect you emotionally? Spiritually? You know, what’s kind of strange is the very first thing I said when I was diagnosed, the doctor was a really good friend of mine, guy that I go to church with and played basketball with.

Really great guy. I had what I thought was a hernia in my stomach poking through my ribs, but it didn’t hurt and no doctor could explain what it was and I didn’t feel right with them. Just say, dude, you’re fine. So I went to him and he looked at me and said, yeah, this is weird. Doesn’t seem right.

Scanned me up. Think it was called an MRI or a Cat scan. I can’t remember what he did, but he came back a couple hours later and he was kind of teary eyed and he said, dude, I’ve tried to rule everything out, but you have all the symptoms of a body that’s been fighting leukemia for a really long time.

And it was actually my spleen, and my liver had gone so large from fighting the bad blood cells that it was starting to poke through my ribs, and it was taking up. My entire abdominal cavity was crazy. The X-ray was nuts. The first thing I said when I heard the news is I lean back and I was like, oh, that explains why I’ve been so tired because I have three jobs.

This is L.A., it’s expensive. I got two kids. I got a wife just to make ends meet. Everybody’s working 60 to 80 hours here. It’s just par for the course. And who with? Children in two jobs. Three jobs isn’t exhausted all the time, right? So I had thought that my willpower getting through me through the day was just normal.

I didn’t realize. Whoa. Okay. There was something wrong with me. How did it affect me? It sucks finding out you have cancer and there’s all kinds of emotions that come with that. But also, I lived in a cancer wing of, Children’s Hospital for a year before that, and I didn’t even dare complain after seeing what the children and children’s Hospital of Los Angeles went through.

I mean, CML leukemia is nothing compared to what some of these cats were doing. So I kind of don’t know how to ask how did it affect me? Because I almost didn’t let it, because I almost felt like I couldn’t. I was not going through anything compared to some of these super brave kids that I saw going through what they went through.

And simultaneously, there were some really good treatments that have come out in the past ten years. I mean, I take an oral chemotherapy therapy pill now once a day you’re looking at me, I still have my hair. You know, I mean, ten years ago I’d be on generalized chemotherapy and it’d be a coin toss whether or not I was still alive.

But now they can really hone in on some of these treatments. And sure, you know, water, attention. A weight gain is a side effect of my medication. So it sucks looking at yourself in the mirror, 40 pounds heavier after 5 or 6 years, and you have to be more disciplined to work out. You know, it sucks being a radio host whose recall has been affected by your chemotherapy.

I don’t remember names dates as well, but I mean, I look at it as a small price to pay to be able to function, frankly, in a very normal way. I feel insanely blessed. So when people say, like, how’s that affected you? There’s kind of a negative connotation to that term affected you that I almost feel like I’m not good enough of a person to cash in on, you know? So anyway, that’s how it affected me.

Richard
Cardon talks about what humility really means. A thought, that for him, is not an abstract idea. His story, a blend of courage and compassion… His life… that… from facing disease to living a parent’s worst nightmare, is a narrative that he shares with a lightness, grace and humor. A presence that shows us something sacred… that gratitude isn’t found by escaping hardship, but by allowing it to shape how we value ourselves, approach our challenges, see others, and do more than simply record the stories we are weaving…  but to embrace them as a way of uplifting the world we are now living in and strengthening future generations. He elaborates…

Cardon
The grandson always wants to remember what the father wants to forget. Perfect example. Is this my biological father? After he divorced, my mother remarried a beautiful Cuban model named Vivian from Love Honor. Her father was a political prisoner of Fidel Castro, and he was sentenced to death by the regime. Imprisoned for eight, nine, ten years. I don’t know all the details because it’s so hard to get them out of her.

He came to this country with nothing on his back, and I would die to know more of my grandfather’s story. Cuban, now Cuban side of my family’s story. But she doesn’t want to talk about it. And people that lived under Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, I could see why no one would ever want to access that part of their brain that their soul had blocked out as a coping mechanism.

But also, the world needs to know these stories, so we hopefully don’t repeat them, especially if we can learn about them. And the grandson always wants to remember what the father wants to forget. So for anybody that is having trouble accessing that, I would say I’m a duty driven person. So oftentimes I consider things morally through the lens of duty and responsibility and so on and so forth.

So I would think, at least if I were trying to overcome this, that I have a duty to tell this story and preserve this story. But dutiful arguments pale in comparison to aversion to trauma in the mind of somebody that went through it. But yeah, I think that’s the angle is, you’re not doing it for you. You’re not doing it for kicks or giggles.

You’re not doing it to aggrandize the person. You’re doing it in order to help preserve the beautiful stories of people that I’m sure were very brave in the face of darkness. And that’s how you pay homage to them, and that’s how you keep their memory alive. And the best chance you have of preventing this in the future is by keeping the story alive.

Richard
“The grandson always wants to remember what the father wants to forget.” Cardon quotes. A sentiment, that if closely examined, reveals a power that can release the weight of generations, subdue the pain we inherit, the silence we protect, and give us the courage to speak what others could not. A grounding premise that confirms our family bibles and our personal histories as more than memories, our traumas and triumphs greater than hurt and joy, and more profoundly as bridges for healing and for growing… An idea that, at first glance, might seem overly optimistic… or even too altruistic for the times we are facing… the judgements we are navigating… the world our youth is walking toward… Cardon expands…

Cardon

One of the few things that was good that came out of the No Child Left Behind act was actually some studies about like emotional resilience in kids at different age groups and so on and so forth. And, Jonah Barnes, the author of Turning Little Hearts, does a much better job of describing this phenomenon than I do. But in a nutshell, they did a bunch of studies during the Bush two era studying what kids thrived and why.

And one of the conclusions they came across was that the kids that knew their family history were just advantaged in every single way across the board. By all measurable statistics. Their emotional resilience was higher, their physical health was higher, their ability to cope with stress was higher, and it made sense. The kids that understood I’m a proud Italian.

I am, bond, Tracy or whatever, and my great great grandfather came through Ellis Island, having survived, I don’t know, starvation in the 1890s due to a conflict with Prussia in the 1870s. And if he overcame that, I can overcome this right, that that knowledge of their ancestry and the strength of those that came before them in past times empower them in present times.

Then 911 happens. And the people that had done the initial studies pre 911 said, Holy crap, twin towers just came down, 3000 people died and there was a lot of kids that were originally participants of the first study, lost their parents during 9/11. So they went back and they redid like a follow up with a lot of these kids.

And of all the children that lost family members, the ones that were able to recover the best and the fastest were those same kids that knew their family history. So that tells us that really the most important thing in life that we can do is, is understand who we are and where we come from and communicate that story and the highlight reel thereof to future generations.

That’s the biggest gift you could give them.

Richard
Cardon speaks of family, of lineage, and of legacy. H is words, a reminder to never forget that where we come from is much greater than nostalgia… it’s navigation. That by embracing the best and worst of our ancestral heritage can be found a passageway to resilience, a facilitator for change, and a doorway to internal peace. A reason to exist that offers a roadway toward embracing our identities, fortifying our spirits when life tests our limits, and a way to open our eyes to the world as we explore ourselves.

Cardon

I just went on the go and do Travel Gospel on the Nile tour. And they do a really good job and a cool job of getting super knowledgeable professor types to guide these tours down Egypt and show you the parallels of how, like the oldest temples in the world, mirror the doctrines of the newest temples in the world and ask all these deep questions.

But as part of Egyptian law, you can’t do a tour unless there’s an actual Egyptian approved tour guide that has continuing education and a degree in history and so on and so forth. And I became friends with her and my security staff. That was with her, because it’s also if you have a bus with X amount of tourists on it, you actually have to have an armed guard, dudes walking around with a straight up, fully automatic machine gun underneath you go.

It’s totally awesome that a security team would like 3 or 4 guys, and I’m friends with them all on Facebook now, and after spending ten days in Egypt with them, we came became really good friends. I was doing some, wasn’t just a tourist there, I was actually doing video content for them and my online behave here is tempered in a good way by the fact that I know international friends that I care for deeply are watching what I post, and it makes me think twice and not second guess myself.

Not in a crippling way, but it expands my horizons of who I talk with and who is going to watch my stuff. Which makes me consider how am I representing myself, my country, my culture, my church? And it’s nothing but positive. The wider and more diverse our friend pool is across more borders, countries and cultures, the more we have to boil down our interactions with the world into their most basic and human centric and positive and unifying, messages than the divisive ones.

I think that as humans, anything that reminds us of our mutual humanity before we remind ourselves of what separates us, breeds good behavior. Yeah, at least from my perspective, that’s the good that I see.

Richard
Cardon calls it our “Our mutual humanity…” A reminder to look beyond our borders and inventory our fears… A call to unity that, if nurtured through mindfulness, compassion, and respect, can enable us to hold true to our own virtues as we allow others to feel safe in theirs. And as we serve, share, and stand our ground with caring hearts and actions… we become contributors to the story that we are all creating…

Cardon speaks of his faith and as he does, he leaves us his why…

Cardon / Some RR
I think the most beautiful aspect of being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, aka mormons. As small and misunderstood as that faith is in comparison to other, larger, other worldwide faiths. From day one, you are taught I am a child of God and what that does to counter the negative influences that the outside world has on us is so profound in its simplicity.

The world wants to convince you that you are the value of your bank account. You are the value of your social status. You are the value of the power that you wield over others. You are the value of your physical strength, of your physical attractiveness at all. Whatever. When you can replace that rat race of power or money or status with the quiet peacefulness of I am a child of God, I’ve already made it.

I’m already there. I am the literal descendant, the anthropomorphic child of an actual and real God. I see that as being the most potentially stabilizing and peace and happiness giving thing that could be taught if the world was listening and I actually thought they would ingest it. That’s what I would teach that end the Ninja Turtles. I don’t think there was a better TV show than Ninja Turtles, so if the world was listening, I teach the Book of Mormon and Ninja Turtles.

It’s nice, you know, nice. But yeah, I’d say Ninja Turtle for Christ. No, not Ninja for Christ. Ninja turtle, Ninja turtle. It’s a very specific subset of ninja. It is green and white at the same time. Yeah. Dude.

The post I am a child of God – Sidewalk Ghosts, Season 3, Episode 3 first appeared on Sidewalk Ghosts by Richard Radstone.