by minimus 53 Replies latest jw friends
Yes, I did. Like a few others have said, I never expected to grow up. But, I also never expected that I would live through Armageddon. I had the same thoughts--never get to high school, never get a driver's liscence.
It's funny, after I was df'd for YEARS I believed I only had two or three years to live--TOPS. Now, you think that didn't make for a self-destructive lifestyle?
I sure did! My mother told me I would see it in my lifetime. When you're little, your parents are omnipotent -- they know EVERYTHING!
But as we get older and we grow up, we come to realize the realities of life.... that our parents are NOT omnipotent -- that they are human and not perfect (gasp!). We realize that we've been told big lies... Santa Claus isn't real, neither is the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny... and that people don't practice what they preach (including your parents).
I believe that life is the journey of all of us learning about and moving from an expectation of perfection into the realization and truth of love, tolerance, and understanding.
I was told that I had just enough time to learn before it came, and if I slowed down a bit, there was a good chance that I would be destroyed. Then I felt that it would be around 1994, or shortly thereafter (until they changed a generation, at which point I believed it could be tens of thousands of years off). Either way, I didn't have that sense of urgency--typically I would hope for wastes of time, I dogged placements and return visits, and had precisely zero people led into the cancer.
Yes...sadly...I bought into the whole thing.
In the late 60's, I was hit "at the door" by the ladies showing the eye-catching pictures of the Paradise Erf and asking how I felt about living there. I accepted their "free home WTS indoctrination Program" and was sucked into the "UREGENT MESSAGE" and the "IT'S JUST AROUND THE CORNER" mindset and hurriedly worked towards baptism to save my backside. Even after the 1975 fiasco fizzled out.....the more time that went by, the SOONER I felt it was going to have to occur. It was not until 1999 did the scales fall from my eyes and the phony WTS fairyland finally disappeared forever.
I still feel that this world cannot go on indefinitely in the way it is headed....but thankfully now I don't have to put my life on hold until "whenever"..... or spend all my time and resources to deliver the WTS message and peddle WTS literature.
