Your life is a series of spans, how these spans influence you and your addiction

by John Carcerano
When you're 4 years old you look at a 20 year old as real real old. But in reality there is only a 16 year difference in the two. The way a 50 year old looks at the time span of 16 years is much different than the way a 4 year old looks at it. When you are alive for 4 years it seems like a long time because you do not remember what it felt like to be around before that, because you did not exist so you therefore could not feel. To a 4 year old 16 years is 4 times the years of their age. So that's a long time. to a 20 year old being 4 again is going back a long ways, but not as long as the perspective a 4 year old has about being 20. To a 50 year old, 16 years means only about one third of their age. The years from 2 on up to 9 just seem to go on forever, as do the years of 9 through to about 18. I think being forced to listen to authority telling you how to do things along with the drawn out years of having to go school (which never seem to end) make adolescence drag on slowly. In our lives major changes seem to happen every 5 to 7 years. Major changes such as sicknesses, deaths, marriages, divorces, tragedies, moving etc. If you look back at your life you will see that every five to seven years your life was massively different due to changes both within and beyond your control. At age 20 you feel strong, vigorous, youthful and you have a full head of dark rich colored hair. At 21 you start to know that your not a teenager anymore, and that reality sets in as each new birthday goes on. By 30, you still feel like your in your early 20's, but by 32 or 33 you start to fret 40 and reality sets in that you are no longer 20 nor will you ever be again. By 35 or 38, 40 seems like a time that will never or better never come. You look to it with dread. At 35 you notice a few gray hairs and you reject them by promptly pulling them out. Thus you tell yourself that your "not gray yet, how did those get here"? And you still feel very youthful. But as 39 creeps up you start to feel very much different inside. You think about being 10 years old again, the time when your mother and father were 40 years old themselves. Now you start to worry that you indeed are getting old. You know the years truly are passing but you now begin to fight it and look for meaning in it all. Your once youthful face now has a small line or two underneath your eyes. You finally do turn 40 and you finally start to feel that you are indeed getting older whether you like it or not. This stage of life is called 'The big reality stage". more to come on this analysis and how your addiction is influenced by these factors ...............