So I walked past a couple of young Witnesses on the way to dropping my son off this morning and they were still there at the station when I came back to catch the train. Seeing them made me feel sad and think about all the stories of regret here on JWN so I figured what the hell I'll tell them.
So I approached them and asked how old they were. They said they were 30 ande 27 - young as far as I am concerned. I asked them whether they had gone to university and they said no. So I told them it made me sad to see them wasting their lives. Well this clearly struck a nerve as they didn't know where to turn.
The guy, who was about 6'4", came very close to stand over me in an intimidating fashion - not being someone to be intimidated I told him to back off and I continued talking by telling them that in 15, 20, 30 or how many years time when you wake up and learn TTATT you would look back and regret being mislead into not seeking to achieve your potential. I told them they would probably be in low paying dead end jobs, not owning a house and not having adequate pensions in place. They said that was a generalisation but I said no that was based on the fact that in this information age there were no well paying jobs for non-graduates apart from some trades and I said in any case what I am telling you is based on the experience of many who have come before you who have told their stories on JWN.
I said to them "Look around the congregation at the old people living on welfare - when they were your age they also believed that Armageddon would come and spare them the need to save for retirement. By this time they were walking in the opposite direction and so my parting shot was: "In the future you will look back on this conversation and say to yourself 'I should ahve listened to that guy!'" I don't think I changed their minds but hopefully I planted some seeds.