This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
In the 2013 romantic comedy, About Time, a young man and woman meet each other for the first time.
He has that look on his face, like he's been struck by lightning.
She looks like she's been struck by the same bolt.
They are hesitant.
They look at each other shyly.
She awkwardly starts to leave when he asks her for her number.
She agrees to give it to him.
He hands her his phone.
She puts in her number and hands it back.
She tells him her name.
But suddenly it's my most valuable position.
The bolt of infatuation is a rom-com cliche.
Two strangers lock eyes and the universe clicks into place.
Their instant attraction is a cosmic checkmark,
a sign these two individuals have found the one person on the planet who is meant for them.
A steady diet of these scenes has conditioned all of us to believe
that if the sparks don't fly in the first five seconds, we're in the wrong movie.
But in the messy, unscripted reality of our own lives,