Let me introduce myself - slimboyfat

by slimboyfat 38 Replies latest jw friends

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  JWdaughter

  Hi Donald, Thanks for sharing a bit of yourself with us. I think part of the growing process and growing UP process is that we continually evaluate and re-evaluate ourselves in relation to the world around us-our past and present. Today your thoughts will tell you one thing, and as the light gets brighter and brighter. . .:) Seriously, being aware of days and events that shape you is important. I have been out since around the time you were born (which is making feel QUITE ancient, though I was only 15 at the time) and I keep having new epiphanies about my association with the org-past and present. I still have family in, and because of that my feelings are strong about the org. I have very positive feelings towards many JWs however and that usually tempers my response.

  One of the most important things I am realizing right now is that what I have learned about myself is great and can give me insight into how to do things in the future, but now that I realize it-I have lost my 'excuse'. My issues are not anyone elses fault, nor their burden to have to understand. Cool thing about you is, I think you already get that, you prodigy! The next step being what we decide to do with the insight and the lack of excuse. I don't know if I make any sense to you, but I am clarifying all kinds of things to myself:) Take care of yourself and your family. I hope all these things work out in the best way for you.
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  quietlyleaving

  Slim, thanks for explaining

  The "fabrication" description I intended to be ironic. I use it to mean two things:

  1. Primarily it is a creation, or a work. In a tangible sense things are made out of "fabric". An account is made out of statements intended to reflect reality collected together to make a narrative, like the lines of thread make up a pattern and a garment.

  2. The more important meaning is the one you pick up on, the sense that a fabrication is necessarily false.

  I believe all stories should be recognised as fabrications, especially "factual" ones for the reason that they largely pretend to be otherwise. If we stuck to the bare facts without narrative we would not be saying much at all. We could have dates, and very sparse descriptions perhaps, but even then we could not escape the pitfalls of using words with connotations never quite matching reality. And as soon as we introduce narrative beyond the bare statement, that involves generalisations, viewpoints, hidden assumptions, subconscious agendas and so on. More fundamentally than that, in order to make any "sense" at all we have to draw upon ideas and discourses that are stictly external to the precise reality we hope to represent. In that sense I think every story is a betrayal of reality, but a necessary one of course. The response should not be utter despair (hpwever one might feel like that at times) at this situation though, it should be a recognition of the enormous challenge in providing any such explanation coupled with a reflexive awareness that is ready to concede superficiality and weakness of description where it can be exposed.

  I see what you are saying and I agree with you.

  wouldn't it be good if we could spread out the garment of our lives and be able to look at the whole every now and then and see where each thread weaves itself and why - but I guess that's where the idea of God comes into the picture in a metaphorical and intuitive sense, we trust that he has the whole picture and is holding it for us while we grapple to make sense from our limited perspective.
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  TheListener

  Thank you Slimboy for sharing with the board.

  I admire your ability to think and write clearly.

  Perhaps one day I too will pen some of my defining moments in life. But, then that is easier said than done. My brain tends to release clear and factual information about my past like a sieve.

  Again, thank you.
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  quietlyleaving

  re betrayal

  However the idea of betrayal I was using more precisely with regard to how we represent our Witness past. When I was a Witness I obviously had a radically more positive perspective on how I became a Witness than I now have. If you had asked me then how it came about my priorities in explaining the same events would have been entirely different. What I worry about in giving my current ideas about what events led up to becoming a Witness, and what they "mean", is that in a sense I am usurping the right of my former self to cling to the positive story he believed in. Is the perspective I now have true or more realisitc, and that former one false and unrealistic? I don't know. They are both stories that try to make sense of an extremely complex reality. A person who knows me well would probably have a completely different understanding that may be more compelling in some ways as a narrative. In that sense I don't think autobiography contains any more "truth" than biography. Would we accept that Hiter's famous exposition of his own "struggle" has more "truth" than the meticulous constructions of historians for instance? I certainly know that loyal Witnesses would not express my journey in the particular terms I used. And who am I to deny them their story? Just because I am the subject of this particular story does not give me any intrinsic right to extinguish counter-viewpoints whether they come from my earlier self or from other people.

  So to cut to the chase I meant the story is a "betrayal" in the simple sense that constructing this new presentation of events involves denouncing large parts of my previous (Witness)understanding of the course of my life. This is a state of affairs that former Witnesses have to grapple with to the extent they hope to create new meaning for their life story I feel.

  As the author (in some ambiguous sense considering powerful externalities) of my life's course, I don't want to presume the right to set out the definitive terms in which my life is to be "understood". I made that mistake before, I think, and this time I want to be fully open to revisions and reevaluations, and who knows perhaps even reversals.

  I was trying to explain to my husband that I was very unhappy as a witness, but he said, no qtlg I remember you being very happy. Of course I'm seeing it from my new perspective and he from the old. Also he is right because I was happy and I was not happy.

  Seeing things as you've outlined has value as we can allow everyone their narratives

  think I understand the betrayal part. In relinquishing my old way of seeing things they feel like a fantasy that occupied a very small space in time whereas my new life in establishing itself is seeking out its roots in the past and cauterising the old.

  thanks again for taking the time to make things clear.

  qtlg
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  free @ last

  marked
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  Berengaria

  SBF, one of my favorite posters
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  cantleave

  First time I have read this. Spookily I was due to fly into Glasgow the day of the failed attack!
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  slimboyfat

  Oh brother, who dragged this up from the depths?

  And where did jgnat, narkissos, IP_SEC, quietlyleaving and ninja go?
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  wha happened?

  There seems to be a trend of reviving old threads
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  darthfader

  This was a great read... I'm glad this thread was um... resurrected...