Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Invented stories have to be believable, which limits them, while reality is under no such obligation. That is why actual events regularly contain coincidences and reversals nobody would accept in a novel, and why a life rarely follows the shape you would have written for it. The practical consequence is that your sense of what is plausible makes a poor guide to what will happen.

Hold your predictions more loosely, particularly the confident ones. When something implausible occurs, resist explaining it away merely because it does not fit the story you were telling.