There is a price to be paid for such flexibility, however.
In its "normal" mode of working with explicit version numbers, Maven guarantees a consistent result, no matter how long the project has been sitting on the shelf or what versions of modules another person's repository chain includes.
It also guarantees that all of the dependencies have been verified to play well with each other, which can be very important with large and complex projects, where obscure interactions can - and frequently do
- cause builds and/or runs to fail. Maven's version of "DLL Hell", if you like.
In other words, with vast power comes vast responsibility, so use this ability with due care.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.