The Young and The Restless | Good things come to those who wait and other nonsense cliches

Some people work or wait their whole lives to get the good things they deserve and don’t even always get them anyway, and others have them delivered on a platter without putting in any effort.

The dawn of social media shows that much is true.

Viral videos have made people accidentally rich and famous overnight.

I’m not for a second suggesting being rich and famous are necessarily good things.

Those who willingly run the celebrity interview circuit afterwards, however, like Haliey the Hawk Tuah girl and Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn, obviously thought their brief spotlight moments were ones to be capitalised on.

One literally made a phlegm-hocking sound into a microphone while she was stumbling drunk on a night out in reference to something I didn’t really want to explain to my kids.

The other, Australia’s now most famous ‘b-girl’, well… I’m not going to caress that subject any further.

Good luck to both of them, especially seeing as they’ve used some of their newfound notoriety to help others.

I’m not saying neither are worthy of money and fame.

My point is simply that their overnight elevation to household names was unprecedented.

I feel like clichés are often designed to soften bad blows; to make people feel slightly better about the less-than-desirable situations they find themselves in.

Rain on your wedding day is apparently good luck.

Well, you’d have to be highly superstitious to buy into that theory, yeah?

My marriage ending just five years after our miserably rainy wedding day is one for the against side of that debate.

It feels like something people just say to make brides feel better about their hair going frizzy.

I think I’m known more for my cynicism than my naivety.

I can’t believe seeing black cats or walking under ladders are bad omens.

Despite it, I do think I’m a positive person. But rational.

The glass is half full if it started empty and it’s being filled.

It’s half empty if it started full and is being emptied.

Perspective, relevance and common sense ensure none of these sayings are a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.

In my post-40 era, I’ve found that a lot of good things do come to those who wait.

Bands I listened to in my teens who toured Australia weren’t accessible to me during their prime times.

No car licence and being enrolled in a school two hours’ drive north of the capital city in which they played, quite often on a weeknight, were two barriers to getting there.

Spending more than a month’s worth of wages earned working casually at Franklins supermarket was another.

From my mid-30s I’ve finally been able to see so many bands I’d been into for 20 or so years.

Skid Row’s frontman Sebastian Bach belting out a whole set of his former band’s best tracks at The Forum, still with his leather pants and chains hanging from below his hips and his trademark blonde locks, was surreal.

Billy Corgan fronting the Pumpkins after Perry performed with Jane’s Addiction in the grounds of a castle on a crisp autumn night was something else.

Ed and his crew ‘crying’ with the dolphins on the coast at Mornington was magic.

Revisiting my teenage angst while listening to the still nasally voice of Brian Molko fronting Placebo was cathartic.

Most people I know, young and old, were in the crowd at the MCG rocking out with Axl, Slash and the Gunners through a powerful set a couple of years back.

That was one genre.

There’s been hip hop and rap, R’n’B and heavier metal, pop and dance.

On the weekend I saw The Cult.

Many I told hadn’t heard of them, but like the others mentioned, they rocked my world in the ’90s.

Some of these old rockers don’t do it like they used to, but if you’ve only ever seen the other side of their prime you might not be able to compare their live performances.

Without seeing The Cult years ago, I can already tell you they were just as good now as they were then.

Ian Astbury’s voice is one of the strongest and most authentic voices I’ve heard live.

There’s no mistaking that the man on stage was the same vocalist in all those albums from 1985 to now.

Seeing all these bands is still an expensive exercise.

Getting to Melbourne on a weeknight from Shepparton is still challenging.

But I’m a grown-up now, so it’s achievable.

I waited, and good things came.

Not because I struck it lucky with a viral TikTok, but because I worked hard while the clock on the wall tick-tocked.

And maybe my patience makes the experience all that much sweeter. Maybe I appreciate it more than if it were just handed to me.

Or maybe — cynical me wonders — if that’s just something someone who’s never hit an overnight jackpot would say.