Rome wasn't built in a day, but it didn't crumble in a day either

I've discussed with my daughter on a few occasions about the importance of taking school seriously and minding adults.  Without going into detail, she has had some members of her extended family have gotten in trouble in their teens and early adulthood.   I say to her, do you think so and so expected when they were your age that one day they'd be where they are or make the choices they did?

I had a friend a few years back whose life became an out of control mess.  She struggled with heroine addiction for years.  Though no one could be sure that heroine was in her system when she died, I believe it ultimately led to her passing.  It had so consumed her life that even when she wasn't high on it, that she struggled to function.  She died late one night in a car accident after recently struggling with it.  Due to the circumstances of the accident there was no way to tell for sure.

She wasn't always a heroine addict.  From what she told me, she was at one point a teen who had body image issues and got hooked on weight loss drugs.  As you might guess there were underlying issues that fed this addictive personality.  In any case, it's likely had one told her in her teens when she started to take weigh loss medicine (drugs), that it could eventually lead to heroine and and early passing, she probably would have looked at them like they were nuts.  However, near the end, she had said that she'd probably die young.

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The news is replete with stories of people in prison whose delinquency started out small--disrespecting the adults in their life, petty shoplifting,  truancy,  breaking curfew. etc--who eventually were doing serious time for hardcore criminal behavior.   "Scared straight" touches on this. 

I understand "Rome wasn't built in a day" to mean that great things take time build or create.   When I say it [Rome] didn't crumble in day, I refer to our historical understanding that that it decayed over time.  It didn't like a man who died of a single gunshot or a well-placed stab wound, but instead like a man who was weakened, compromised and eventually passed away due to how he treated his body and bad things he partook in and the bad influences he surrounded himself with.

Like the collapse of the Berlin Wall and later the Soviet Union, to some people, the whirlwind of events was shocking, but I think to others, if they were honest, would have seen the signs of collapse forming evidencing over time.   Lives like empires, can complete their collapse abruptly, but the process of crumbling from my experience, knowledge and observations can be a gradual process with most of the steps being fairly small.

Anyway, here are some observations on

Harmful and destructive tendencies or addictions and how they can operate to destroy our lives

• They can lie or deceive you about their impact.
• They appear to be small, but end up being a gateway to worse.   You smoke a cigarette after being peer pressured and it makes you feel relaxed.  Eventually it can take more and more cigarettes to keep you relaxed or even worse, it just doesn't do it anymore and you look for something stronger to help calm your nerves or make you feel better such as marijuana or worse.
• They appear to be small, but continuously 'getting away with' them can give a false sense of being consequence free or invincibility.  This can give 'courage' or illusion that it is okay to take the next step and then next step and then next step.   You steal a candy bar and get away with it, this can give you the confidence to steal progressively more and more expensive items until you get caught stealing an automobile or worse. 
• Consequences of them can build up over time.  Whether it is spending more and more money you don't have gambling and having to borrow more on your way to losing everything, whether it is a build up of liver damage or heart trauma or the like from drugs and alcohol, or some other consequences that seemed manageable or not visible immediately, consequences will build up and eventually become impossible to miss in time.
• Can put you in a progressively more hopeless place. 
• If you blow off school and don't do well, you limit your future earning power and in turn can limit your ability ability to start and/or provide for a family and in turn end up poor, miserable and with a shortened life..
• If you get caught stealing or cheating, you can ruin your reputation and make it harder to succeed honestly as people may limit your ability to earn an honest living.  The extreme version of this is people who end up in prison for felonies, especially involving illegitimately gained income.  When they come out, it is more difficult for them to get a good honest job.  So, there is an incentive to 'earning' money the only way they know how and going back to their life of crime.
• If you alcohol or drugs take hold you may lose employment and/or friends and dive deeper into it/them instead of facing the the pain of that which you already lost.  

Rome, on the surface, was a thriving empire for scores of years after its high point and to an outsider probably looked invincible.  But, as history has taught us, it was decaying on the inside.   There wasn't one step which led to its crumble, but many.  The world of that time couldn't envision the Roman empire collapsing into the dustbin of history.  But just like those whose lives crumble around us, the changes in them can be gradual and hard to envision as fatal.  Yes, when my friend when she first struggled with body image issues, I doubt she envisioned the path that she was on as fatal, but unfortunately it was.

IMHO, that's why it is important to find a way to stress the point to young people that poor choices you make now, may not seem like a big deal, but like the Roman empire, can be a stepping stone towards eventually crumbing of their lives.