Quitchabitchin'

Do you have a friend, maybe multiple friends, that turn their life into an emotional roller coaster ride when in reality it's more like an emotional bike ride?

People who are overly self-involved attempt to make their life meaningful. And a good way to do that is to make one's life into a story. A story with a dramatic, climactic plot line; an overarching theme or motif; and most importantly, dramatic happenings to be addressed and overcome by the protagonist. The protagonist then betters him or herself with the experience. At least according to Kurt Vonnegut (link courtesy of Shoot An Apple Off My Head's stumbling).

People's lives are not stories, he argues, not roller coaster rides, but rather bike rides on a flat street with the occasional hill to tackle and hill to ride down. In general, humans coast on a relatively flat plane, with no story-line, no cataclysm. So it goes.