Why does everything most always work out?

I think it is as simple as almost everything is temporary. If you live you move on to a new day and new things. We do learn from experience, and learning means we can make better decisions in the future. Adversity forces us into change, and change can be good.

We all know people where it hasn’t happened. Where their life took an awful turn and the results were devastating.

About the gas. In America cars are made to not be accurate for the final amount of miles left. I saw a show about it 10 years ago, maybe things have change. The cars in German were accurate by contrast.

Things mostly work out for me, but I have some health issues that I would have been much much better off without. Some things about my health problems have helped me with other subsequent problems, and I also appreciate smaller joys in life because of my health struggles I think, but never having had them would have been better.

I’d say it’s due to selective memory. Many of us prefer to see the world through rose colored glasses.

I have seen reports from many people who have exactly the opposite view – nothing every goes right and good things always get messed up in the end.

I think @YARNLADY has touched on an important element of this issue. How you will view a situation retrospectively is going to be determined at least in part, by your overall tendency to optimism or pessimism. Some people always see the downside of any situation. Others always see the upside.

For me personally, I’m an optimist and so perhaps obviously, I’m pretty happy with the way things work out usually. Even when I’ve had major disappointments, with hindsight, I can usually say things were either fine or in fact, better than if the original and hoped for option had happened. For instance, I was knocked back for one job but within a few weeks my dream job came up and I got it. So yes, I think things do usually work out okay as long as you don’t throw the towel in and become negative.

There is a theory is physics (and for that matter, in Economics) was is the Generalized Theory of Equilibrium. I’m not going to show the mathematics of it, but (boiled down) it says that over time, all events reach a balance, or an equilibrium that takes into account all of the factors that led to each of the events. Basically, the theory says “everything evens out eventually”.

So it is with events in your life. Something bad happens, but over time something good happens, and we all reach equilibrium (or own personal balance) as a result.

This has nothing to do with god or prayer or the man in the moon… it is the relentless physical forces of the world that cause this to happen.

Oh, yes. I once lost a lawsuit in which someone rear ended us on the freeway. Later, a giant tree fell on her house crushing her kitchen.

@marinelife What a story!

Things kind of have to work out. Somehow we push through life’s challenges. Or we’d just give up and die or kill ourselves.

I think we’re often too close to a situation to objectively judge what the right or best solution is for the long-term. I can recall many, many times when that was true for me and now thank my lucky stars things worked out the way they did and not the way I initially wanted them to.

‘Things most always work out’ is the rule for only a small slice of humanity, and even for them only if you disregard the fact that in the end, things tend to go pretty badly (which is why it’s the end).

Three of you mentioned that sometimes things work out better than had they gone the way you wanted. I too have experienced this. So many times that I’m often tempted to just Let the river do the rowing. Give me an ore, and I’ll probably tip the boat over… then blame the river.

I get your point @YARNLADY, and can agree with the logic for some events. But I must say that it also works in reverse, for me. I look back on one relationship and realize that I didn’t want it to end because I wore rose colored glasses during it. I insisted upon believing that it was better than it was. Looking back now, with the glasses off, I clearly see the toxic relationship for what it was, and not what I wanted it to be. With hindsight, I would wrestle a herd of porcupines to avoid a similar relationship.

I really appreciate the “smaller joys” perspective @JLeslie. A thing I long for. To appreciate reality for what it is, rather than what my jaded perspective insist it be.

The GToE may be one of those undiscovered forces of reality @elbanditoroso. Just like evolution, or gravity. I wouldn’t be surprised if it operated behind the scene of every discipline. Nice that the observation has a name now. Opens up the doorway for conversation to those riding high on the wave, and those stuck in the valley. I’ll just sit back and wait for things to level out.

I have a theory @thorninmud, that what we think of as the final end, may just work out to be the real beginning.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Just to clarify I would rather be much more shallow and never have had my health issues. Probably as I got older I would have appreciated the little things more in life anyway, but my health issues are a sadness for me that totally sucks. I don’t really give a shit about some sort of silver lining related to my chronic illness, I missed on many things because of it.

Understood @JLeslie, to the degree that I’m capable.

I guess that I’ll be testing your theory since I lost my job two weeks ago. Hey who knows, maybe I’ll get a better job. Thank god I’ve saved some money. Ultimately life is about ups and downs, where the bad follows the good and vice versa, so it seems that the point of the question is an inevitible circumstance for most of us.

It’s the law of averages. Statistically speaking, bad things will happen and good things will happen. Somtimes these things seem to be payback or karma when it’s really just coincidence.

Like the day my partner ran to catch a bus, and the driver pulled away, laughing, just as he got to the door. My partner waited fifteen minutes for the next bus, and on the way he passed the first one, broken down by the side of the road with smoke belching from the engine. (Guess the driver accelerated too hard, hmmm?)

“Hindsight is 20/20”… in addition to the aspect of selective memory, I think that when contemplating the course our lives have taken, we are able to recognize that there was growth and learning from the challenges we’ve faced. This allows us to imagine that “everything happens for a reason” and that we needed to experience the difficulty in order for us to learn that particular lesson and experience a paradigm shift. Looking back, we can clearly see how various decisions made led us to become who we are now, and we like to imagine that we are headed in the right direction.

@downtide – Ha! Karma’s such a bitch love it. Hope your partner gave the drive the one-fingered salute.

For the most part it’s true, but those you have to regret forever are real bitches.

Sister is in the E.R. right now attending her husband, who just fell off a roof and broke his leg, He’s been gainfully working as a construction foreman for the past two years after being unemployed two years prior. They just had a baby three months ago. He had an interview with a larger company tomorrow morning. Not going to happen now.

Their family had come a long way out of a rough time and were well into getting some forward momentum going. They were happy. Now they’re sad. The old fears leap upon them again, immediately.

A time for family to draw closer. We are grateful for no worse harm. We will look back upon this day as blessing for better life to come. We will all be better for it.

We will make it that way.

This is a hard question. Because if you had asked me this about a year ago I might have gotten angry and told you you were just a lucky mother***er and life doesn’t “just work out” for everyone. I was angry because things weren’t working out for me.

Things are working out for me now. But they didn’t for about 7 years, which is ⅓ of my life. Does the fact that the bullshit eventually passed means that things worked out? Or does the fact that I lost a lot of my youth to the bullshit matter? Is that a tragedy or is it happily ever after?

The fact is that most things do pass. You can notice the bad things passing and say hey, look at that, everything always works out. It’s optimistic, and that’s a nice way to be. But it is selective. Good things are always passing too.

I think most people strive to find “happily ever after” within their own lives. They’ll find it even if it’s not necessarily there. We hone coping skills. Things stop seeming bad because we gain acceptance, and then we say everything worked out the end. Humans are very adaptable.

@Mariah things “didn’t work out” for 39 years, for me. Now they have. I am sooo glad I had the patience and the hope to wait long enough (without topping myself)

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Sorry to hear about your family. That is a very tough one esp when children are involved though it would be quite enough on the outset any way.

This is an aside from that my personal philosophy.

Things always work out because each day we have to wake up and face our problems anew. The world keeps on turning and we adapt. We become strong and resourceful enough to handle what is put before us.

The alternative is giving up a living death or being dead. That goes against basic survivor instinct. And inevitably good does arise from the situation. If only because we love our lives and moments of pleasure are deepened and would not have existed if we didn’t struggle.

I personally feel and maybe this is silver lining sappy that the depths of our pleasure the sweetness of it is limited to the amount of pain we endure. The pressure created crevasses later become the chalice containing our joy. As @elbanditoroso stated in a scientic manner.

I recently read that with fMRI machines the highly sensitive personality feels emotions more intensely then the average person but say that hsp had a painful childhood, they register later feeling a noticible degree of pronounced positive emotion then the hsp and the average person.