Seventeen years ago, 52-yearold Simon Smith was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Smith lost his grandparents to cancer; his father suffers from leukaemia and his mother is a victim of breast cancer. "But it's not the end of the world, you can fight it," he says.
In hindsight, Smith believes cancer is the best thing that ever happened to him. "It changed my life for ever, and for the better," says the UK resident, who was in the city last week to construct a sand castle at a high street shopping complex. Smith had noticed a lump in his groin, but ignored it for two years. Only when the pain became unbearable did he go to the doctors, and thus learnt it was cancerous. They advised him to get it operated immediately, and undergo chemotherapy.
While undergoing treatment, he couldn't retain any food and lost 42 pounds in a few weeks, as also his teeth and hair. "Chemotherapy was painful. The idea of sitting in the hospital bed, seeing people die and thinking about my own deteriorating condition was killing me," he says. "Half way through the chemotherapy, the doctors sent me home to rest for a couple of weeks because I wasn't responding well to the treatment."
But Smith didn't go home. Instead he went down to the beach where he rediscovered sand. "With a broken lollypop, I started carving sand, and found my hidden talent just like that," says the sand sculptor. "I realised that all the pain and stress wasn't worth it. I am going to just live my life. (Live being the operative word). So I was just by myself at the beach, eating junk food, relaxing and building sand castles."
Smith's mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of the book The Power of Positive Thinking, and Smith met him very often. "He used to always tell me, 'If you take your problems, and put them in a box in the night, when you wake up the next day, you'll find the box empty'. Your problems are only in your mind. So why mourn or whine about it? The fear of dying of cancer was only in my head. Once I changed my attitude, my body started reacting to the chemotherapy and I was healed. "
A few weeks later, Smith went back to the hospital, ridiculously positive and this time reacted surprisingly well to chemotherapy. But putting positive thinking into action was the toughest part. One has to train the mind. "When I went back to the hospital, I used to tell myself every day, repeatedly, 'I'll fight this', 'I'll be healed' and I did." Once he decided he would be healed, he knew he would be. "I just kept thinking of a box and put cancer into it. I said to myself, 'I don't have cancer. Cancer is not my problem. I am not going to die."
Smith, who hasn't seen a doctor in the last 17 years, says, "The day I got out of the hospital, I called the doctors to thank them for their services, and told them I'll never see them again."
When Smith got home, he stepped out of the real world and stepped into a pit of sand.
He gave up his job as a salesman and took to building sand castles full time. He left his house, and started living in his van, which he still does, and travelled to various places, building sand castles wherever he went. He's a minimalist, eats only one-meal-a-day, and owns only the clothes he wears and the tools he needs. But cautions, "I don't want the world to copy me. It's not monkey-see-monkey-do, but the trick is to control your body through your mind. You need to tell yourself that you're fine."
When asked if he finds moulding sand therapeutic, he says, "Oh no no. Anything can be therapeutic - washing clothes is therapeutic, gardening is therapeutic. I just do it because I love it." The only workout he does is related to sand. "If my body starts to deform when I am shoving sand, or carving a car, motorbike, building, or cathedral, that's the shape I got to be," he says. Smith steers clear of alcohol, drugs and makes sure he sleeps for eight hours a day. "A stress-free life and the power of positive thinking have kept me alive. I know I'll live to see a 100 years," he says, affirmatively. "Believe in yourself. Don't worry about nothing."
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