What are the chances…
There’s always going to be something that intrigues humans about romcoms, in the same way that some of us will always enjoy being scared to death in a cinema or sobbing into a book about the journey of a dog across a dusty dessert into the heart of a broken man who was once a hopeful boy with a pet piece of string or whatever. The reason we will always love romantic stories is? Yes. You know it. Don’t be shy. It’s a cliché really. Let’s all sing it together: mathematics.
Jokes! If you’re anything like me, your Pavlovian response to the concept of mathematics will be to instantaneously liquify and slop and slip down the nearest drain shaft and on into the sea where you will become that mist that sometimes crests the top of a wave like a halo. I think what I’m trying to say is that the probability (stay with me) of any human person sharing a meaningful connection with any other human person does prompt philosophical questions such as: who’s in charge here anyway. It’s so unlikely that one person be born in the first place LET ALONE two people LET ALONE in the same timeline or in or around the same place. And here’s the best bit: maths can’t explain any of it. That’s where the humanities come in! (Phew! Here comes a good time).
Think of it. You encounter a group of mates and one of them will be saying something that suggests years of mutual engagement, decades of in-jokes, countless arguments, crushing disasters, shared joys or stupid office rituals. A tiny snippet of just one of the billions of lives that are taking place around you at all times. And what are the odds of the wrong person stepping out of the background and becoming a villain in your story? Annoyingly, and this I can confirm having conducted several empirical tests, the answer is not zero. And why do some people drift towards each other sometimes with such ease?
What I’m saying is maybe it’s okay for me to be listening to an enemies-to-lovers audiobook with the focus of a surgeon instead of reading the teetering pile of brilliant literature that wobbles beside my bed.