First post here: longtime lurker but hesitant to take the leap. My story is pretty much like everyone else’s with little variance, but I thought I’d add a few details that especially tormented me when I was in. I’m sure these are familiar, I’m afraid this is a bit of a rant.
--“Paradise”: the constant chatter about a perfect world when most in the hall were not even slightly interested in taking care of the earth now. I knew of families that felt recycling was unnecessary because Jehovah was going to make the earth new.
--The stance on higher education is mind-boggling itself, totally crazy, and well commented on here, so I thought I would add how often even elementary school was slighted, with families often putting down teachers and their local schools, expecting the most flexibility out of teachers but rarely offering classroom help, school maintenance help or even supporting school functions….Kids were always told to get grades to be superior students that would be a good witness, but never any appreciation for the teachers who help them get there. In fact, from the stage I often heard comments against teachers as if there was this vast conspiracy of teachers trained to turn all children to Satan.
--Debates: do these people love their rules or what? Aside from doctrinal issues, I never met so many people interested in making new rules for others. Service was the worse because so much time was spent getting to the territory that some super-righteous sister or brother would start debating whether JW’s should stop drinking coffee because it was a drug, or stating whether gyms were wrong because they were “meat markets” for immorality. Thing was, if you called them on it, they never really wanted the rules for themselves, they just wanted to debate and incite some weird “I think more spiritually than you” conversation.
--The blind eye by some elders turned towards some definite “wrongdoing” in order to keep their kids in the truth. Elder kids often had an ace in the hole with daddy making back room negotiations, or their kids simply not getting into trouble for doing the same thing that others might want to do. I can remember carloads of elder kids going clubbing at over-21 bars on Saturday nights, but turning in other kids that they saw there. Guess who got in trouble and who didn’t? Really, it’s just who you know!
--Geography: YES! Geography! Do you think anyone in the hall commenting on Uruguay can find it on a map? Or even one of the countries in the yearbook? So many illustrations involving places nobody bothers to learn about, just get to the part when the miraculous new pioneer is created. I remember keenly one sister who, when talk was about the country of Georgia was having persecution, a sister in NY thought it was Georgia the state. The South. The peaches. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not to be a snob but really? Just read it out of the paragraph and move on.
--The bias against single people (yes, really!) exhibited, particularly towards single women. If you were single and over 20 something was wrong with you. If you had a career, the more so. Aside from the pressure to get married (and be miserable like them), there was an implication of being selfish if one didn’t abandon their job to start pioneering since it would be so easy without a family. Especially odd since they get so excited when a professional person comes into the org, and they make a big deal out of it. If you bring a doctor in, guess who is going to be on the next assembly part? Yep, it’s a big coup to bring in a person with a pedigree, can’t you hear the applause by the rapturous audience? Yet soon after, that one is going to be pressured to cut back, stop, or whatever in order to do more. If they don’t, it troubles them, especially the elders. There is something suspicious about you if you aren’t a window cleaner or masseuse.
--In my case, I had a great job when I came in, and I was single. I had no desire to pioneer. More than a few times there were not so subtle questions about why I wasn’t married and if perhaps my personality was too-independent minded for a man. Then, if I ever questioned anything or commented out of the standard playbook, I would be told I evidently had an independent “spirit” and that was, you know, bad. Married sisters hated me (not that I was pretty, I’m not, but I was free), and single sisters that were obsessed with competitiveness would make little remarks if I might be gay (I’m not).
--Same thing as brothers who choose to be single…they must have some secret “flaw” and they are in for misery by the congregation who can’t mind their own business. The advantages for men though is that there are so many women JW’s, that men are a hot commodity…they can be a troll and still have women visiting their hall in droves.
--Lastly, as said more succinctly by so many others, service. What an enormous waste of time. Sisters arguing in cars, or sometimes not speaking to each other as they spread the “good news”. Gossiping. So much misery waiting, hoping nobody was home, and then having a partner who was taking the day off from talking so you would be stuck. It never felt like I was really doing anything for Jehovah or Jesus, it just felt like something to put on a piece of paper to make the secretary leave you alone. And the guilt!!! Remember one year they handed out your time slips for the year (at least our hall did) at the beginning of the meeting? Everyone sitting there with their sad little slips, made to feel that they should have done so much more. I left there ticked off that night, simply because the only point of the talk was guilt. Guilt over numbers. Why is that always the agenda?
--And about those endless car groups, I can remember the creative approaches so many took to counting time. One pioneer brother regularly picked up dry cleaning, doing his banking and taking business calls while out in the morning, and nobody was bugged. As long as a mere publisher didn’t try it. I was even GLAD because it meant less time facing a door and trying to explain why I was invading their space and putting the householder on the spot for their personal convictions. Others would just scan parking lots, bus stops, and Laundromats (dumping new mags on one’s left the day before) to kill time.
Yes, I suppose I do have an independent spirit!! I feel so much freer along with much closer to Jehovah and Jesus now because I'm relying on them and not men. The only issues that really bug me now is that occasionally I'll get one of the meeting songs in my head randomly, or remember some particularly weird illustration. With time, I hope this all eases off my mind.
