A river carries a leaf and a log at the same speed. The current doesn’t care how important you think you are.

Conditions treat everybody the same regardless of their own estimate of themselves. Time passes at one rate, deadlines arrive for the confident and the terrified alike, and the current is entirely uninterested in where you rank. That is humbling and also a relief, because it means far less is personal than it feels.

When something goes against you, check whether it was aimed at you or whether you were simply in the water with everybody else. Then put your attention on how you are travelling rather than on why it is unfair. The second question has no useful answer.