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English - intro assignment: Use your own experience to reflect on the greater world. Written in class. I didn't particularly like what I came up with; it seemed too whinny or self-pitying. Got me thinking, though.

Since I quit being a Jehovah's Witness I've tried to cast off any affiliation with that cult. It's strange, because I also feel the need to mention it to people more often than even I think seems reasonable. Admittedly, it's often as a way of explaining oddity. (It's worth mentioning that I derive some pleasure from referring to it as "a Jehovah's Witness" instead of "one of Jehovah's Witnesses," a fine difference mostly only insiders would get.)

Anyway, I realized the other day that this was all really kind of stupid. I was one for over 20 years, and in a lot of ways I'm culturally still one today. Acting as though all that's not still influencing me is silly, and I don't need to feel bad about it. I mean, it doesn't influence me enough to think that men have some god-given right to rule their families or that homosexuality is wrong or that Armageddon really is right around the bend and there are 144,000 people up in a heaven with a god, even if those images do sometimes strike me. But it does influence me in other ways: I grew up looking forward to a world where there would be no war or starvation or even violence among animals. They'd encourage us to have goals for our unending lives. Mine was that I wanted to have been on every square inch of this earth, and I still want that today! Nowadays, of course, I realize it would be pretty much impossible to accomplish in one lifetime, but I can edit that into a reasonable goal: visit as much of this planet as possible. Now I just need to get on that! I understand now that 'violence' between animals is natural, but I've gotten a greater understanding about the violence we perpetrate on animals, and I'm gradually doing what I can to keep out of that loop. The sleeping with a tiger goal may not ever happen, but I have really nice dreams about it, and that's almost as nice (and without all the hair & claws).

I also got lucky never having been taught an afterlife (except resurrection) or a hell, so it's pretty easy to accept that when we die, we just die. The whole resurrection thing does make it easier to conceptualize death & rebirth, though, so sometimes I placate myself with the thought of reincarnation. Literally, reincarnation is true in the sense that I am a carbon-based life form that will decompose at some point and be 'reincarnated' in some other form of life, such as the nutrients into a plant's root system. Or the water in my body will seep into the ground & be used by plants, or animals, or evaporate and fall as rain. That kind of reincarnation; it may or may not carry some "essence of Erika." It's also a big part of why I'm against being stuck in a coffin, essentially an air-tight vault stuck inside another vault, then buried. The only way I'd be reincarnated in one of those is when, eventually, the whole load would sink far enough into the earth to reach the mantle and begin to depressurize & melt which would be, in the most literal sense, Hell (melting rock & all that). The kind of reincarnation I'll occassionally indulge in to placate myself is the less vague kind, the Hindu kind, but I'm not really sure that I believe that as much as enjoy the thought. That comes up more often when I think about the first 20 or so somewhat wasted years of my life and that I'd like to innately understand what I know now in another go at life.

Anyway, all these things (& more) shape me, often in good ways. I know I've got the gumption to be an activist specifically because I was taught to be one, albeit for a different cause. My sense of integrity and the love I feel for all kinds of people is directly linked to being raised a JW (or at least a Christian) and buying into it at one point. And I'm grateful for those things.

So, the plan is to stop denying who and what I am and just accept myself, even if I'm not the ideal for what I'd like to be. The sooner I start accepting, the sooner I can understand what I have to offer and do something with that.

That's the plan. Now for the hard part: the execution of the plan.