The older you get, the more you've experienced and the less any individual moment represents of your accumulated life. When you are a child of like 5, a year r

The older you get, the more you've experienced and the less any individual moment represents of your accumulated life. When you are a child of like 5, a year represents 20% of your entire life. When you don't get that toy. That is literally the worst thing that's happened in your life up to that point. You have absolutely no frame of reference. You don't even have the capability to imagine and compare hypotheticals. You are unaware they even exist. As you get older, you get more experience, you become capable of hypothetical thinking and comparing events to things you haven't directly experienced. And, any given year is less of your total lifespan. That's what we call maturity, that ability to reference our own experience. That's why children who have experienced great trauma seem more mature. Because they've been given experiences we don't expect even adults to handle alone. Like kids in cancer wards. They're mostly chill because not getting a lollipop after chemo is kind of insignificant to, you know, having cancer. It's also a perspective we lose as we get older. We don't remember what it's like to not have that life experience. Not really. I can remember being really disappointed at not getting that really sweet Lego space set when I was 9 or 10, but I can't really feel it again. I look back on that kid as almost someone else. Even though I feel as much myself now as I did then.