I had an answer like this in mind, but not as elegant as the way you've put it. I had imagined it as a basketball metaphor:

Think of btc as a team in the NBA at the beginning of the season. The best thing that could happen is if the team faced enough adversity that they were forced to suffer, to scramble, to fight with each other and figure out who to be, but not so much adversity that they were torn apart by it and fell into learned helplessness.

Over the course of the season they slowly improved, with many ups and downs, but got on a run before the playoffs -- they started really putting it together. In the playoffs, every series was close, but high variance -- they won big and they lost big. They faced elimination. They had to manage euphoria. They made adjustments. Round 1 demanded a somewhat different approach than round 2. Different heroes emerged each series. The players grew and evolved and adapted.

They win the title in the end, exhausted but jubilant.