You know that one elderly couple sitting together on the bench by the waterfront in that one chick flick that you swear you’re never going to see?

 

“I would rather have gone to the quad, I think,” he said.

 

“Yes, we’ll have to do that next time,” she responded. “Oh, I got those cherry muffins we wanted, but they’re a bit dry…”

 

I was sitting on the light brown bench at Lake Lag with that couple yesterday. My friend beside me was reading a book with a protagonist named “Hiro Protagonist.” Two separate students I knew strolled by, each holding the hand of a significant other I had no idea they had.

 

The elderly couple continued on about someone’s kids, after leaving once and returning to the bench. The woman turned to me then, with a very happy face:

 

“Excuse me — do you know when the Super Bowl is playing today?”

 

And the playlist of that one fraternity house went from “Hakuna Matata” to “Don’t Stop Believin.’”

 

I got thirsty, so we ventured into the ceramics building behind us for a water fountain. We ran into a mutual friend who was spending the afternoon sketching with two other girls at a table on the porch.

 

“Does it help? Drawing something so simple?” one of them asked, as her friend shaded in a three-dimensional shape.

 

“Yeah, I don’t have to draw complicated arms for once.”

 

I thought it was funny that I was hearing this dialogue in the midst of thinking about why this day seemed so effortless, so I interrupted — no better word for it — their conversation to ask for permission to reprint their words, as I’ve done just now.

 

Then my friend and I headed back to our original bench, passing that elderly couple as they left the lake. The woman smiled broadly at me.

 

The interesting thing about writing is its ability to condense life into digestible stories. And we often resent it. Did this pleasant story seem real to you? Or did it seem removed and thus unreal? Because in some stories, couples do stay married until they’re old. Characters run into each other in unexpected, out-of-context situations. Strangers meet strangers that voice the thoughts they were literally just thinking. In the movies, these things happen, and oh, do we scoff. Life is complicated. Don’t be naïve.

 

But my mom is right, as she usually is, though I don’t know how much so until later: “Those things do happen in real life!!!” (My mom has recently taken to great repetition of this statement.) The fact, though, that the statement exists at all, often with incredulity and an exclamation point, says something: namely, we don’t believe it. Indeed, history courses have taught me that a good dose of skepticism is healthy. But more and more I’m realizing how easily I can overdose.

 

“Love is cliché” and “I hate clichés” were the catch phrases I used to stamp all over my notebooks and binders in high school. And, until recently, “I hate romantic comedies.” (But, seriously — “When Harry Met Sally”?! How could I think I wouldn’t like “When Harry Met Sally”?!) At least in part, this self-branding campaign was an effort to prove I was more complex than any easy movie montage or oft-stated song line. I thought I was sufficiently old and jaded enough to conquer simplicity, pish-tosh. Skepticism was sophisticated, sophisticated was cool and, in this world, being “cool” is really important — even if the word’s exact definition is in constant flux. But, oh, the irony of thinking I could hate a “cliché” like love, when I soon learned how much of a gift it actually is.

 

My default setting to general skepticism caused and causes problems. It’s a tiresome position that has forced me to play devil’s advocate and say things simply because another person didn’t. It’s useless controversy in casual conversation, poison for so many of my family relationships. Skepticism is what keeps me from a particular relationship, a future I might reject, my trust in someone. And the fact is, for all of the ways we say we’re not hopeless romantics, we are. Every time we ask a new acquaintance if they by chance know another friend of ours, or take a chance on someone we keep thinking about — that is us permitting, finally, belief in something pure and simple, without letting reason or logic interfere.

 

In a skeptical world, slow afternoons are cliché, the elderly couple is picturesque, the soundtrack is completely coincidental in this column. In a skeptical world, my day was all of those things. But, if my day was going to stay my day, I would have to choose otherwise. So I would choose to believe in something simpler.

 

This is Nina’s first column of a new Daily volume. She’s hopeful for it, but wants to hear from you first. She’s waiting — literally! — for a thought or two, which you can send straight to ninamc “at” stanford “dot” edu.