Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.
“Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.”
“In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.”