Convicts and Me

What do convicts and I have in common? We've both lived with a cement slab floor for years.

The new house is an old house that has been added on to in the past. One can notice the slight shift in floor level when walking between the old part of the house and the newer part of the house. The floors creak in spots.

After years of living on a cement slab floor, I'm definitely not used to such things in my own house. It makes me sympathize even more with how hard an adjustment convicts must have when they leave prison and try to start their lives again.

Asymmetric personal philosophy

I've had lots of time to think during drives between the old & new houses. One thing that struck me recently was that my world view/personal philosophy is asymmetric: when good things happen, I generally attribute it to "the universe" sending me signs that I'm doing the right things, but when bad things happen, I generally either think of them as random events or signs from my subconscious that I'm not doing the right thing. It's interesting to me that positive things are potentially given by external forces, but negative things are perceived as coming from an internal source. Understand that I still believe that many positive or negative events are simply random events (from my point of view) -- I don't look for signs in all things. But there are some things that really do seem to speak to me, and those are the events I'm talking about.

At first, I thought that this sort of asymmetry was unusual, but then I got to thinking that maybe this is the norm. I know lots of people who "take credit" for good things, and blame others for bad things (internal vs. external again). Many Christians give credit to God (external) for good things, but blame their own weakness/sins for when bad things happen.

What do you think? Do most people view positive and negative events very differently? What does this say about a person? Or, maybe this whole thing is about those people who view some events as significant while viewing other events as strictly "random".