Regarding the life is never fair thing, there is a beautiful sequence in Little Miss Sunshine that goes into this.

Spent twenty years writing a book almost no one reads. But … he was also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he gets down to the end of his life, he looks back and he decides that all the years he suffered – those were the best years of his life. Because they made him who he was. They forced him to think and grow, and to feel very deeply. And the years he was happy? Total waste. Didn’t learn anything.