Dewey was quite taken with Emerson's thought of the long logic of a life. That sense made of things only within the long duration. Perhaps: βιοσ not ζοε.
I would categorize my two levels of struggle as being beneath that long logic. There's the struggle to survive the present and the near term, and separately, the disjoint between degrees and experience and the prospects at hand. Both of these, though, have an endogenous logic to them, and the long logic of the life supervenes both. As to what it means for a single life that these things have happened within it, I think I have yet to understand, as perhaps is appropriate, and perhaps even fortunate. Not in the sense of not yet realizing something, but in not presuming to understand something before its hour.