An idle brain is the devil's workshop

Ever noticed how, in the morass of set sentences that people will throw at you when they're at a loss as to what to say, one will shine through that is at least half-true? And how, if you look closely, this sentence may not, in fact, make sense?
Take my personal favorite for instance: "it's when you're not looking that you'll find it". Wrong! If I'm not looking, I'll just miss it, won't I?!
Or "the sun always shines after the rain" - tell that to Noah. The guy had to endure 40 days of unrelenting rain, and what for? He was the one left to scoop up all the happy couples' poop after that. I'm pretty sure he'd beg to differ.
Oooh, oooh, and "where there's a will, there's a way". Now. I wonder how no one (or if someone, for that matter) has ever used that one to justify rape, fraud, murder...
OK, I'll stop here. But you see? Three examples - and they do say that good things come in threes. And right there, we reach the crux of my quibble. Because they're not always good, those threes. I very much wish they were, though, because two of my friends whose lives had already taken a turn for the better have just recently found a job, and it would be much appreciated - very. much appreciated - if I made up the third part of that decent threesome. But previous experience tells me that a third friend will phone soon to let me know that they too are on their way to professional happiness.
Anyway. I do sense a pattern of threes these days. Like the number of bills I have to pay, or the number of films I've seen in the past three days (oh my god. two threes in one sentence?!), or the number of people I've seen picking their nose, for example. So there was the lady on the train the other day, and some undetermined person (surely there was some undetermined person, there's always an undetermined person picking their nose somewhere), but the one that will stay with me for a while is the guy on the street yesterday. He was being so thorough at it that I almost patted him on the back in congratulation when finally, after a couple of unsatisfactory forays up his sinuses, he was happy with what his finger had excavated. Definitely, for him, third time was lucky.