By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
My friends are always sending me funny emails and jokes. My box fills up with them every day, and some of them I have seen “a hundred” times before and I just delete them. But the following story, though I had seen it “a hundred” times before, struck me today, as it really does have a good moral.
An old man, a boy and a donkey Ӭwere going to town.Ӭ The boy rode on the donkey and the old man walked.
As they went along they passed some people who remarked, “What a shame ”¦ the old man”¨ is walking and the boy is riding.”
The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed”¨ positions. Later they passed some people who”¨ remarked, “What a shame”¦ he makes that little boy walk.””¨ So they then decided they’d both walk!
Soon they passed some more people”¨ who remarked, “They’re really stupid to walk when they have a decent donkey”¨ to ride.”
So, they both rode the donkey.”¨ Now they passed some people who shamed them by saying, “How awful to”¨ put such a load on a poor donkey.” The boy and man figured they were probably right,”¨ so they decide to carry the donkey.
As they crossed the bridge,Ӭ they lost their grip on the animalӬand he fell into the river and drowned.
The moral of the story? If you try to please everyone, you might as well ”¦ Kiss your ass goodbye!
Too many times in this life I have found myself “trying to please everyone.” Most of the time when I did that, I ended up not only not pleasing anyone, I hurt myself in the process, because I never even considered what I wanted to do or what I thought was reasonable!
I can look back on many of the “adventures” I have had in my life (an ADVENTURE is the RESULT OF POOR PLANNING), and see just where I went wrong. Much of the time, the adventure was caused by me trying to please someone else, or someones (plural) else.
I’m not saying here that you should never listen to what other people advise you, or that you should never take someone else’s opinion into consideration, because sometimes people do have ideas that we never considered that will make a situation easier. There are other times, though, when people have opinions on how we are doing things that are emotionally based “bad ideas,” that we should discard and listen to our own good common sense.
For example, the first critics objected to the old man walking and the boy riding. Number one, both the man and the boy were obviously “okay” with the situation just as it was, and the old man was comfortable walking and the boy was comfortable riding, and frankly, in some situations I’d rather walk than ride a horse or a donkey. So if they were comfortable, as things were, they should have continued doing what they were doing, but they decided to change.
Then the second set of critics so again, the old man and the boy both decided to walk, and they seemed happy enough with that until the third set of critics came along and criticized them for not both riding the donkey ”¦ and so on, until, listening to the last set of critics, they very uncomfortably decided to carry the donkey. Now I don’t know if you can even imagine how the donkey would have squirmed and wiggled trying to get its feet on the ground, but it would have been trying hard to do just that, and it would be no surprise to me that it fell off the shoulders of the old man and the boy and drowned in the river.
I’ve always heard the old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So if your life is going well, and someone else doesn’t like the way you are running it ”¦ you might think once or twice or even three times before you change how you are doing things.
Psychopaths come into our lives and somehow seem to make us unhappy or dissatisfied with how our successful life is going, and they want us to change something about how we are doing things, even though we may be quite satisfied that our life is going along quite well. Though it is definitely none of their business whether we “ride the donkey or walk,” they have something to say about it, and that is, “we are doing it wrong.” So if you are satisfied with your life, if things are going along well, don’t let someone else make you think you are being abusive to your ass, because if you let them influence you too much, and don’t think for yourself, you may just be like the old man and the boy and lose your ass.
Ox – (((((( LMAO))))))
Candy, well, darling it is the truth! Glad I made you chuckle though. The reason I feel so okay about swinging the cyber skillet is there is just about nothing STOOPID that any one had done involving a psychopath or allowing themselves to be used/abused that I haven’t done as well…or worse.
I got pretty good paddling that canoe, and most of the time I had a psychopath along who was chopping holes in the bottom as I tried to paddle and bail at the same time. It never dawned on me to throw them into the river and dock my canoe and just GET OUT OF DE-NIAL….but I’m learning to do just that. Let them sink or swim, it is NOT MY PROBLEM what happens to them. (((hugs)))
Oxy, I was horrified to hear that some schools aren’t even teaching cursive handwriting. It’s bad enough that many don’t teach phonics, which is essential to make the connection between sound and spelling. Anyone who thinks we’re going to use computers and cellphones for ALL our written communications must be smoking bad stuff! And of course, cursive handwriting is quicker and more efficient than block lettering. It’s appalling to think that a future generation might have to train as paleographers just to read their grandparents’ letters to one another!
It’s all very well to spend time “teaching” computer literacy in schools, but I dare say most kids pick up those skills by themselves these days. It’s a bad idea for humans to become overly dependent on technology without learning basic skills and the theoretical underpinnings that technology depends on. It all reminds me of a classic Arthur C. Clarke story called “A Feeling of Power,” about a future civilization in which everyone is dependent on computers and calculators and no-one can do basic math. So when a technician comes up with ways of doing arithmetic WITHOUT a computer, it’s a complete novelty. I found a copy of that story on the Web, right here.
I think we were lucky with our own daughter’s schooling. But that’s way behind us now; she’s 27 years old. We put her into kindergarten a little early; she was still a couple of months shy of five when she started. That was in Massachusetts. She did fine in kindergarten socially, but she wasn’t quite as ready for the work as other kids who were older. She did however have the quality of persistence, so she’d still be working to finish a task when other kids had completed it. At the end of the school year her teacher didn’t think she was quite ready for first grade, and proposed to put her into a “transition” class instead.
That would have been ideal… IF this teacher had had the commonsense to stick with her original assessment of our daughter based on a year of observing her in the classroom. Instead, they decided they wanted to “do some tests” on her first. When the “results” came back, they said they wanted her to repeat kindergarten instead! This test was supposed to assess her “developmental age,” and among the factors it examined was dentition. I was livid when I heard that. Dentition is NOTORIOUSLY variable! It says very little about a child’s INTELLECTUAL development, which is what this was supposed to be about. Repeating kindergarten would have been a total waste of her time.
I would have fought that decision and urged them to go with the teacher’s original assessment—except that the issue become moot because we were moving to Phoenix that spring. After we got here we enrolled her in a local grade school, and simply told them she was due to go into a “transition” class in Massachusetts. They had a similar arrangement here at the time, and the teacher for that class was excellent. She taught phonics among other things, and our daughter did very well in that class, just as we expected. (Unfortunately that teacher subsequently left the profession to start another career, a definite loss to education.) There was also a gifted education teacher there who was superb. So we have no real complaints about our own experience with public education, but I realize it depends very much on where you are and what you get.
We did have a chuckle about one teacher who was teaching literature or drama or something of the kind in high school. My daughter came home one time and asked me “Dad, what’s MACKABRAY?” She THOUGHT she knew what this teacher was saying, and how to pronounce it, but she wasn’t completely sure. So after I stopped laughing I reassured her that she had it right, and the teacher must have only ever seen this word in print, never having heard it pronounced. (It was probably significant that while “macabre” is a word of French origin, this teacher was pronouncing it as if it were Spanish. There are lots of Spanish speakers here in Phoenix.)
A good start in reading is especially important, because anyone who falls behind at the outset is less likely to read routinely for pleasure and will probably fall further and further behind as time goes on. It’s deplorable how many children don’t have the most elementary mistakes corrected in school. Ignorance of the distinction between “to” and “too” is one of those things I see all the time on message boards and the like, and it makes me grate my teeth. If people can’t (or don’t) read, they have far less chance of reaching any real understanding of the world they live in, apart from the superficial pap they’re fed by the mass media. And it’s just as shocking that the MANAGER of a store has no grasp of basic arithmetic. We might expect that from somebody who only stacks boxes on shelves (where I’ve seen hand-lettered signs saying MOR BOXS IN BACK), but a store manager is expected to look after the business end, profit margins and the rest of it. How can anyone do that without a feeling for numbers?
It is truly unfortunate that many people who ought to be informed about psychopaths and other personality disordered types just won’t get access to the knowledge they need. But unless schools deal with topics of that kind, what can anyone do? I’ve seen people who were virtually illiterate coming to message boards for help with abusive relationships. Some were incoherent; it wasn’t even clear what they were trying to say, so it was hard for anyone to respond to them, and they went away after a post or two. They got no help to speak of.
But I’ve long suspected that the reason schools don’t teach topics like “how to recognize abusive, controlling or predatory behavior” is that some kids would find out their PARENTS behave that way! Then the parents would kick up a big stink and the teachers would be told to “mind their own business and go back to teaching history and Eng. Lit.”
I do agree that the people here on Donna’s board do seem to be educated and literate. Also, what’s just as important is what you mentioned in a post back in May, that this board does have a good atmosphere, a good spirit. That was in that discussion of Vaknin—one of many topics I meant to get back and post about, but never found the time. (There are lots of topics like that!) I know you mentioned they’ve had a troll or two here, but any board gets those. In my experience what can be more problematic on a board for abuse survivors is people presenting as “victims” who in reality have abusive, controlling, manipulative or bullying traits themselves. They can worm their way into the fabric of a board—even as “administrators” on occasion!—and ruin its good spirit. I’ve seen that happen several times, and I could tell a horror story or two. Donna’s board seems to have been successful in avoiding people of that kind, without (as far as I’m aware) any need for constant heavy-handed intervention. That’s a praiseworthy achievement.
Dear Redwald,
I very much enjoyed your above post about education…I’m sure the two of us could write BOOKS (plural) about what we think of education and how we had to work to get our kids educated….in my case, for all the good it did since my youngest son decided to become a thug even though he was in the 99th percentile in IQ…but the fact that too many kids can’t READ or “cipher” scares me about our country….if you can read and do math, you can LEARN ANYTHING….if you can’t read or do math, you can LEARN NOTHING. Yet so much time and money is spent on “career awareness” days and how can a kid become a doctor or a lawyer if he/she can’t read or do basic math.
Donna has worked hard to keep the trolls away and to keep the ones who come posing as VICTIMS but in actual fact are disordered people looking for attention at bay.
The Sam V-owned site I was first on as a very raw victim had administrators who were TOXIC and abusive, keeping the drama rolling. It was only by accident or the grace of God that I found LF at the time the Sam V site had stomped me into the emotional ground when I was at my lowest ebb, hiding out in my RV with my P-son’s buddy hunting me.
It was a “life saver” for me, and especially to find that there were other intelligent and educated people who had been fooled just as badly as I had been….I finally saw I wasn’t the dumbest smart person in the world. LOL
Being dumb or smart/educated or illiterate depends on a lot of things but I know lots of very smart people and one of them who is so illiterate he cannot even write his own name….I can only imagine what he could have done if he had had the opportunity for a good education, but in spite of no education, he has a work ethic and is honest and has done well for himself in this world. But I see today so many kids who are SMART but have NO desire to work or advance themselves or to learn, and their role models are “stars” of media and sports who are like Michael Vick and Paris Hilton and the “reality show” people, and the people on Jerry Springer’s show. It makes me sad for our country and for those people who miss out on so much by nothing having a desire for REAL Learning
I continue to learn every day (even with the short term memory problems I have) and learn here on LF and get a great deal of support here on LF, as well as being able in some way to pay back the support I have gotten from so many people that has helped me in my own journey of healing.
Thank you so much Redwald for being part of Love Fraud, your posts are always interesting and thoughtful.
Redwald,
in general I agree with most of what you’ve said. There are the exceptions though and I think that’s where the spath personality comes in. My ex-spath hated school and authority so he dropped out at age 12 and ran away. He can barely read and write or do arithmetic, yet he successfully trained himself to design and build aircraft and fly them. Before that he trained himself as a welder and as a musician. Once, he told me that it’s really important for a person to have a passion outside himself, so that he can have a focus or goal in life. Of course I now realize that his passion is to be evil. This motivates him enough to do anything he sets his mind to.
As far as the reading, writing and arithmetic, well he just uses his INABILITIES as part of his pity ploy. People admire him all the more for NOT being able to do those things and yet be amazingly talented in so many other ways. So in effect, what he does is DEVALUE education by showing how UNIMPORTANT it is to him, while at the same time, he leaches off them because of their abilities in reading, writing and arithmetic, by using the pity ploy and having them do all that work for him.
Then he goes out in the world taking the fruits of his own and other peoples abilities and showing them off as if they were only his own.
I think we have a few politicians, like Sarah Palin and George Bush, who fall into that category as well. They can barely speak correctly, so they offer that as proof that intelligence isn’t necessary as long as you’re always right and people like you.
Sky my P-sperm donor dropped out of school about 3rd grade and was living on his own by age 12 as well…but he was extremely smart and he educated himself. Some people who are very smart CAN educate themselves and if they do have a passion for a specific subject can become experts in that field or fields….Bill Lear the man who invented and built the “lear jet” has over 150 patents for things like the first car radio, the 8 track tape player, several very sophisticated radar and aviation things…and never went past 8th grade. VERY smart guy and I also think he was very high in P traits. My late husband used to work for him and knew him very well. He was very narcissistic and a serial cheat on all his wives. His last wife knew it but still ignored it and stayed on with him.
I even think that Sam Vaknin is “smart” but a scum bag…my P-sperm donor was very smart, but a total scum bag, and my P son, same-o, same-o….and I’ve known some really dumb folks who were WONDERFUL people, not very smart maybe, but kind, compassionate and honest to a fault. I think I’d rather be that way than the smartest person in the world if being smart also meant I was a psychopath.
Skylar,
Just wanted to comment about your opinion on the intelligence of politicians.
FEW??!! A FEW politicians can barely speak correctly? I wanna list more than a few!! Include Pres Obama who needs a teleprompter!! And McCain, who can’t control his bitter pettiness. How about the ones who just can’t talk without cussing, like Biden? It was jr high when a teacher taught me that cussing was PROOF of the inability to articulate worthy opinions.
Hey…Am right with ya that spaths manipulate so that their weaknesses are their pityplay excuses or even as proof of OUR deficiencies. My husband’s father loves to crow about mistakes made by people with university degrees. He’d say,”that’s what that college education got ya”. As if once I got my degree, I HAD to be perfect or it was proof that I wasn’t worth sh. it – that b/c I didn’t know something, meant I was stupid.
I know, in spite of the fun I am having here… to be fair, how someone speaks is not proof of intelligence. Lesson taught me when I was very little. I was born in Mason City, RIVER CITY. MUSIC MAN!!!Where good salt of the earth folk knew that supersmooth talkers were… they didn’t use the word but it was synonymous with spaths. Musta been why my folksy talking cowboy husband seemed so down to earth and sincere. I was leery of Mr Slick, but my spath portrayed himself as humble and down home comfort. His ruse disarmed many a dupe, still does.
http://youtu.be/9QBv2CFTSWU
Katy,
my spath also portrayed himself as a blue collar, humble man. Emphasis on the humble.
That is not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about what Cleckley referred to as “semantic aphasia”
“Words do not seem to have the same meaning for them as they do for others. In fact, it is unknown if they truly understand the meaning of their own words, a condition called “semantic aphasia” (Cleckley, 378).”
My spath would hear certain words and use them over and over because they sounded good to him. It was just like the way that George Bush said, “don’t misunderestimate me”. They make up words, they use words inappropriately, and they confuse words. One of my spath’s favorite words, was ordacity. He heard me say that someone had the audacity to do something and he substituted ordacity. They have problems with speech. Not all of them do this, only a certain type of spath has this problem. To my knowledge, Bill Clinton didn’t have this problem. But it’s still a red flag. Bush and Palin have it.
Constantine was discussing the inappropriate use of words like: two, to, too and there, their and they’re. My spath also confused our, are and or. That’s how I could tell that the letters he attributed to others, were actually him. But I never told him. I find it comical.
What is not comical, is that I, who have NEVER confused any of those words, since I first learned to spell in 1st grade, am finding myself making those same mistakes – constantly. It’s frightening.
I’m learning that the spath tries to slime us with their sick emotions. They want us to feel what they feel. But how the heck did he get me to spell how he spells? This is a mystery to me. It only started to happen AFTER I found out what he is. Before that, I could still spell without thinking. It was as natural as breathing. Not anymore.
I see that it has to do with spelling what you hear. I used to take an extra step before I spelled certain words. I would pronounce them phonetically the way they look, or I would visualize them. Then my spelling would come out right. Now it seems that I’m skipping a step or two. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my mind is occupied with figuring spaths out.
constantine,
I thought you might like this:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.evolutiondebate.info/CalvinHobbs.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.evolutiondebate.info/&usg=__HWfgEHiF9fZnTEDTZ4R8HwKGIlk=&h=372&w=1164&sz=218&hl=en&start=0&sig2=ajq0yOGeqaAc2_GPuZ2RFQ&zoom=1&tbnid=HnkXXhSj8Gns7M:&tbnh=68&tbnw=214&ei=Z-4STpmIG8nSiAKl1vm1BQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmath%2Batheist%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7ADBF_en%26biw%3D990%26bih%3D627%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divns&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=457&vpy=294&dur=3575&hovh=127&hovw=398&tx=133&ty=61&page=1&ndsp=14&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0&biw=990&bih=627