In conversation, I just said:
Думаешь, что ты на коне, а жизнь снова отвешивает тебе оплеуху.
Here I wanted to express the idea of "life has a way of ...". In English, this expression refers to the way how something generally happens, as in "Life has a (funny) way of working out just when you start to believe it never will" or "Sailing has a way of growing on you".
I wonder if in Russian the imperfective aspect "отвешивает" – as opposed to perfective – was enough to make a sweeping generalisation about how things work? That is, without adding another word such as "жизнь умеет ..." or "жизнь способна ..."?
What is a commonly used phrasing for this in Russian?