In Reply to: Re: Blast from the Past (Repost) posted by Erik's Daughter on June 08, 2004 at 10:18:15:
My own experience confirms some of your analysis, E.D. I joined at the age of 16 and then left TF around 4 years later. I was in the Philippines at that time and instead of returning to my home country and my real family, I went to one of the remotest and dangerous parts of the Philippines and lived with villagers and squatters for a year. I had absolutely no sense of my own identity and my place in the world, and basically wasted that year.
I returned to my home town in 1977 and for the next two and a half years tried to find my place in the world, but without success. I moved aimlessly from job to job, always felt like an outsider(still do) and didn't really fit in anywhere. At that time I considered myself a backslidden christian and I don't remember seriously confronting or analyzing my life in TF. It was just like you said, "Once ppl leave TF, they start to work through basic identity questions that begins in adolescence and continues throughout life. It's hard work figuring out where your niche or place in a complex society will be. It's often much easier to give up and go back to the relative ease of TF where the rules for fitting in are all laid out with great specificity."
And that's what I did. I ended up rejoining TF at the end of '79, convinced that there had been changes for the better. The requirement to "deny myself" put an end to any self-discovery I had attempted. That self-denial continued for another 11 years until I left again in '91.
A year after leaving the 2nd time I entered university. Knowledge and critical thinking were two essential elements in the process of discovering what worldview I now have in replace of my old one. I ended up spending 7 1/2 years in university, graduating just two years ago with my second degree. But what I have discovered is that I'm a 48 year-old who still doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up. In these years since leaving, I've often felt like I was still a teenager, discovering so many things and allowing that new knowledge to inform my perspectives and opinions. And I'm sure that there are many ways, most of which I'm probably unaware of, that I am still immature, still in the identity development phase of adult maturation.
I look forward to reading more of what you have to say about this subject.