There are times when we manage to step outside of our own identities, perspectives and world view, and look at ourselves, our situations or certain lived experiences almost as an outsider. Sociologists call it seeing the strange in the familiar. An anthropologist by the name of Miner wrote a fascinating piece involving this very concept (see http://www.ohio.edu/people/thompsoc/Body.html). I’d love to read a similar piece written about the Witnesses in the style of Miner.
From my reading of posts on JWN over the past 10+ years, I have come to especially enjoy when people (especially those born-in) write about their own personal experiences wherein they manage to get their first glimpses of JW practices as truly strange. In other words, they themselves see something about the Witnesses as really strange. They take the perspective of an outsider in doing this. And the experience is one in which the individual experiences it as an outsider (to whatever extent is possible), only s/he is still inside, looking out, looking back in.
All Witnesses are able to do this to some extent at times. Even as born-ins, we were all aware of how we were “different” from the “world.” We knew our language and various practices were outside the norm, and these things helped to define us and also helped us feel like we belonged as Witnesses. But what I’m talking about here is when it goes beyond simply “knowing” we were different, but actually looking outwards, looking back in and seeing and feeling what we were looking at was, indeed, truly strange.
Would anyone here like to (re)share any experiences you had where you felt as though you were able to step outside of yourself as a Witness, look back in and see how strange or odd it all was? What prompted this? How did you deal with these experiences?