Why does life have ups and downs?

No one escapes pain in their lives, or disappointment or anything else. It is in how you react to it.

I like to use nature and the animal kingdom as an example.

What really separates humans from animals is the stories we make up about how things are good/bad right/wrong, fair/unfair.

The bird loses her eggs to a predator. Does she fall into depression and wallow for months? No. She simply rebuilds a new nest and starts over. Minus the mind stories of how ‘unfair’ it is.

It is the ‘stories’ we create that cause our suffering, not the events themselves.

I’m unclear as to why one would expect a life without ups and downs. We live life from problem to problem. Change is constant. All we can do is try to deal with. Sometimes we screw it up, and end up depressed, and sometimes we get it right, and are flying high.

If there were no downs you would never experience and up. It’s a trade-off you have to accept.

Wouldn’t life be boring if it were the same old thing day after day and you new what was around every corner. Sometimes I wish we didn’t have so many down’s but it makes me appreciate all the great things that happen to me so much more. So I wonder if that is why we have the down’s is to make us appreciate the wonderful things of life so much more than we would if we didn’t have them.

Life would not be as much fun as the downs help you better appreciate the good things you do already have in your life.

I think its because it makes it much more fun. If there wasn’t ups and downs life wouldn’t be interesting… it would always be the same thing each time.

Because it’s a rollercoaster.

What goes up, must come down…… Besides, our lives are the results of lots of ups & downs, our parents :-/ emotions ……

@queenie Make sure all you have your seatbelt in place because its going to be a bumpy ride on this rollercoaster of life huh lol

Complex emergent systems sometimes exhibit oscillations, which may occur at any scale. We speak of these at the largest scale as “life’s ups and downs.” Scale refers to both to overall influence of these changes on our life and to the time scale over which they occur.

OK, I totally made that up. But it’s plausible, right…! ~

Because life is chaotic. Things change; things happen; random incidents occur.

This question reminded me of a story I read along time ago. A guy died and went to the afterlife. When he woke, he had a caretaker with him. The caretaker took the guy hunting for pheasants. Every time a bird went up the guy bagged it. He couldn’t miss. He was having a great time and asked the guy if everything was this easy in heaven. The guy said who said you were in heaven?

That’s the thrill of the ride….whoo hoo!

If there were no downs, you wouldn’t appreciate the ups! : )

@Adirondackwannabe There was a Twilight Zone episode with that very scenario, involving a gambler who thinks he’s in heaven because he always wins. The punchline becomes a surprise ending. Sebastian Cabot played the devil. It was called “A Nice Place to Visit.”

@gasman I hadn’t seen that episode. Thanks for the title.

@gasman

I remember that. Everything he touched turned to gold and everything he attempted was always successful. As I recall, he finally asked if they could arrange for him to lose now and then, and their response was “Certainly! How often would you like to lose and how much?” : )

If you’d have only good things happening you forget about suffering. And if you’d only suffer you won’t see the life worth living.

Because the society and cirumstances around us are not always nice. That’s just life. The negative parts in it are just as important as the positive ones. Using the hard lessons learned from the negative ..the better you can live in the positive. Not everyone learns though.

I just thought about this question for about a week now, the one time I feel really good, but the next im feeling so bad…
I think i have a problem since it changes way too often…
Someone know how I can make this good feeling more regular? Because the sad side of me always wins it from the good side,

Because it a long path and alike that it too has turns, ups and dons that we have to face in order to reach our destinations.

I think that if you go through pain, you can trually embrace happiness. If you don’t trully know what it feels like to hurt, then happiness is often taken for granted. I’ve suffered in relationships, and then thought I found the perfect guy and I was happy, until he broke it off and now I am in depsiar. What does the future hold, I wonder?

Because the valleys and the mountaintops must be crossed in order to complete a journey.