So Patrick... got upset before his early 20's, fixed his attitude and then became an elder? How brat do you have to be, to be upset in your early 20 to feel you were overlooked for the elder position?
Agreed. Not a sign of a well-balanced personality. And increasing the pressure for such desire among young men is only going to make that worse in the kind of youths who allow it to influence them.
As I've said on other threads about this, I think it's a recipe for future disaster to keep promoting immature and inexperienced young men into these roles, especially as times are so difficult for married couples, divorcees and widow/ers, families with young children, retired people facing health problems and so many other groups that these young single men will not be able to relate to. Not only that, these young men have only a basic grasp on their own 'spirituality', so could be easily knocked off course by pressure, disappointments or the stress of the workload. And with fewer stable older men around them to give the benefit of their experience either, the whole thing is a ticking time bomb.
But it's a situation of their own making. As mentioned on another thread about elders promoting younger men, they've had at least a couple of decades to improve how they train and bring onboard younger men, but most COs and bodies of elders have failed to do so because they either didn't want to have younger ones challenging them, or they were unreasonably strict about the 'standards' they expected and felt these men were not ready, even as they grew into their 30s or even 40s.
The org's fixation with details like having too few hours in field service, not being a 'go-getter' obsessed with pioneering or Bethel, not having the best speaking voice or maybe dressing a little untidily (or - shock, horror - having a beard) meant many brothers were ignored until they eventually got disillusioned and either left the JWs or at least took a back seat and got on with the rest of their life - marriage, career, etc. And who can blame them?
