Welcome to the forum, young man. You sound like you've got your head on straight and will figure things out as you go. Just remember the words of Galileo:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
You seem to be using critical thinking skills beyond your years. Hold onto that... develop it. You're much farther along than I was at that time. Grab some library books that deal specifically with critical thinking skills. It's a set of tools that gets far too little attention in traditional K-12 schooling, IMO. I'm 32 and at the age of 27, the only CT skills I had came from osmosis.
Thanks for sharing a bit of your circumstances. You remind me of myself at 17.... well, minus the college. I'd graduated early (home school for last 3 years -yech), started regular pioneering, and met a young "sister" at a JW wedding of a mutual friend. I was 17, she was 16. I locked in on her because of the way she carried herself: classy, poised, naturally beautiful... think Audrey Hepburn. She didn't appear to be pretentious and she wasn't clamoring for attention. I asked her to dance (after sweating it out for most of the night) and she accepted. Before the reception was over, she gave me her address and, infatuation or not, I was hooked.
Anyways, long story short, over the course of the next year, I fell in love with her and pursued her relentlessly. Too young? Yes. Immature? Absolutely. After a number of platonic letters back and forth (aka texting of the 90s), she kindly gave me a lukewarm shoulder and made sure I knew we were just friends.
Half a year later, she unexpectedly shows up at another wedding, we hit it off (though I cowardly tried to avoid her), started dating, and have been happily married for 12 years. (BTW, if you're interested in how my wife and I arrived at our current state of disbelief, here be the details.)
I'm not sure why I'm writing this, aside from the fact that your story sounds familiar and makes me sentimental. I'd really like to see you get the best deal out of this life. Projection, maybe? Sounds like you have a lot of potential and you're still plenty young to fulfill it.
Bear in mind, when you were younger, an adolescent, you accepted many things you were taught as axioms. Kids are, by nature, naive. The reason critical thinking is so valuable is because it forces a person to be critical of his own thinking, to even go back to the source of one's knowledge, and question it. It is self-refining, when applied properly. "How do I know? Why am I certain?" Religion typically - though not always - paints doubt in a negative light. This is no less true of the Society.
Well, I've said more than I meant to so I'll cut it off here. Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk about dating stuff. It's been a few years for me but I'd be glad to share my tiny shards of memory and experience.
Best wishes to you, POY.
-SBC
