Events have no agency in them. Responses to events do have such agency.

Apologies for another nit-picking response but this question embeds a very poor assumption that events are a cause of well-being or ill-being, the former being positive the latter negative. It is an assumption built into that facile tool in developmental psychology, the Life-Events Inventory. Here is a description of it, followed by a brief history … More Events have no agency in them. Responses to events do have such agency.

The silliest binary of them all is that between positive and negative life events.

A quotation from Balzac is worthless as a  proposition of a supposed truth as held and stated by that great soul, for these quotations are often, as this is, the stated view of a character in a novel, a thing up for debate. It is a good proposition to start with in  response to this … More The silliest binary of them all is that between positive and negative life events.