By Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
I was reading an article about Steve Jobs’ new biography that came out this past week, and some of the stories about his life. There is no doubt in my mind that Steve Jobs was one of the smartest and most savvy guys in the Twentieth Century. The inventions that he fostered or personally thought of have changed our society and our culture, and remarkably changed the communication field. An amazing man!
You may have read the title of this article and are already wondering how Steve Jobs was killed by a “psychopath.” Jobs died of the terminal stages of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with this very serious form of cancer. Apparently, according to what I read, it was a slower growing kind of this cancer, and if he had had surgery right then, there is a good chance that he might have actually effected a cure and be alive even today.
That wasn’t what Steve chose to do, though ”¦ he chose to deny the seriousness and the urgency to take drastic action immediately to exorcise the tumor out of his system. He did not essentially “go NO CONTACT” with the toxic, malignant entity that had silently invaded his body. As smart as Jobs was, and even though he had access to the best and most knowledgeable physicians in the world, he did not take the “appropriate action” to have the surgery. Jobs told his biographer that he did “not want to be cut open like that.” He later regretted that decision and even realized that it may have cost him his life.
His biographer says that he ultimately saw that the colon cleansing and other “new age” treatments did nothing for him, and nine months after he turned down after recommended surgery, Jobs finally decided to have it—what is called a “Whipple procedure” to remove the tumor. It was too late; he had missed that narrow “window of opportunity” in which he could have saved his life. He “got a divorce” from the tumor too late, the damage had been done. Though Steve Jobs fought valiantly for the next decade, the ultimate “win” by the psychopathic cancer was a foregone conclusion. He had failed to excise the cancer from his life while it was small.
Psychopaths as cancers
Too many times, I see psychopathic relationships with “malignant” individuals, and like cancers, they may grow inside us without being detectable as toxic until one day, even before we know they are toxic, the fatal damage has been done. Or, we may get a chance recognize them and to excise them when they are “small” in relationship to the rest of our lives. We can remove them without leaving large scars or holes in our lives. If we get this chance to remove the “malignant” people from our lives and we, like Steve Jobs, decide on a “want and see” plan, we allow them to grow and infiltrate our lives more fully, so that if and when we do decide to “surgically” remove them from our lives, the hole and the scars that they leave is much larger and more debilitating than if we had “done the surgery” when the situation wasn’t quite so ingrown.
Jesus talked about “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, if thy hand offend thee, cut it off,” and went on to analogize that it is better to live a life with one eye or one hand than to live in “hell” with two eyes or two hands. Sometimes I think the “surgery” necessary to remove the psychopathic personality from our lives is very much like “plucking out your own eye” or “cutting off your own hand” with a rusty butcher knife. But the point of the situation is that in order to live a good life, or in some cases to live at all, we must make the hard decision to excise the toxic person, or the malignant tumor, from our lives as soon as we know what they are. Waiting around, treating this toxic, malignant issue with “kindness and love,” isn’t going to remove it from our lives or our bodies, or change it into something benign. We must take drastic and surgical action to remove this malignant person from our lives completely.
Removing those around the psychopath
That may also mean taking out the “lymph nodes” of the people around the cancerous person, just like the doctor will remove lymph nodes from around a breast containing cancer where that malignancy has spread into those nodes so that they, in turn, don’t spread the toxin to the rest of the body. It is unfortunate but true that a toxic psychopath will frequently have spread their lies and toxins to other people around us that we may also love ”¦ their families, our mutual friends, etc. A “cure” from the toxic psychopath may require us to be NC with those people too, and excise them from our lives as well. The longer the psychopath has been in our lives and the more deeply involved, the more likely this will be necessary. Failing to “bite the bullet” and do this as well may result in a recurrence of the malignancy this person leaves in our lives.
Steve Jobs was a significant personality in our culture. Of course there is no guarantee that if he had elected to have the surgery sooner rather than later, that he would have lived longer or better, but I can guarantee that living with a psychopathic person longer, or trying every “alternative” cure, except total surgical removal, isn’t going to improve your life in any way.
I think even in his death, Steve Jobs left us one more important thing ”¦ a lesson for anyone involved with a toxic relationship of any kind.
LOL Stargazer!! 🙂
Slimone
THank you
Athena
Near, I know what you’re talking about but this guy who had in the ad moved home was acting like he was a “chef” or something and making fun of his parents who were old and asleep by the time he got in. Actually the parents were out with their friends in their spiffy new car having FUN! LOL
As for fast food, while I’ve cooked mostly from “scratch” at home, I too have several pounds of lard on my arse from fast foods eaten out. LOL
Milo! I told that joke about the ghost sheets to everyone who would stand still last night and let me tell you they ROARED!!!!! Thanks for that joke, it will be a favorite around here now as long as I can remember it! LOL CRS!!!!
Oxy ~ What joke??? LOL – in my case it is what my Amish neighbors refer to as “oldheimers”
Milo,
Spath called it Oldtimer’s. I think he really thought that was the correct pronunciation.
Sky ~ I think they think it is correct pronunciation, but then their first language is not English, so a lot of things come out kind of different.
Milo, there used to be a large Amish community near here and I used to see them at the local live stock auction….good folks for the most part but they are some kind of horse traders…you better count the horse’s teeth when you buy it from them.
Funny true story, a friend of mine bought a mule from some Amish guys at an auction, and he over heard them laughing about what a deal they had pulled in selling it. The mule when you hooked it to a plow or wagon would LAY DOWN AND BALK and so really in their opinion was worthless so they were glad to be rid of it.
The man took the mule home, put the harness on it, and hooked it up to a log, and sure enough the mule laid down. The man tied its feet together and walked back to his house. When his son asked where the new mule was he told his son what he’d done.
THE NEXT DAY the man went back and untied the mule’s feet, and it got up and NEVER AGAIN LAID DOWN WHEN IT WAS HOOKED UP TO WORK. The mule had struggled all night to get loose, but was unable to do so, so mules, being very smart like a donkey (they are half donkey, half horse) figured out that if he laid down again he would have to stay that way all night and he did not want that to happen again. The mule was an excellent worker after that.
You just have to be SMARTER than the animal you are trying to train. Beating on the mule would not have made him get up, and I have no doubt that the Amish guys beat on him plenty before they decided to sell him to some unsuspecting buyer. LOL
I also know a bunch of Amish jokes too…most of them are not “dirty” but they ARE funny. We also have some Mennonites around here who will drive a vehicle for work, but don’t have electricity in their homes, and they wear the Amish-type clothing without buttons or belts. They also educate their kids a little better and more than the Amish families I knew.
Here’s an article about steve Jobs by his sister, she might be prejudiced, but it is worth reading, I think.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055438/Oh-wow-Oh-wow-Oh-wow-Steve-Jobs-final-words-revealed-sisters-moving-eulogy-man-treasured-happiness.html
Yep Oxy ~ some kind of horse traders, for sure. I live in one of the largest Old Order Amish commuities in the world. We have many different “levels” of Mennonites also. Makes navigating our roads a little tricky.
There are many Amish families I would not EVER do any kind of business with. We are lucky, everyone on our road and their families are OUTSTANDING individuals and I would trust them with anything I owned (and I have). One couple has gone on vacations with us all over the US.
Love the story about the mule, I will have to tell that one to the neighbor who is a blacksmith, sounds like something he would do.
Makes life interesting –
sky – your spath proved his intelligence time and again….