A truly nifty competition

A fifteen minute video. Seven people, ranging in age from 10 to 75, go into an MRI, and have five minutes to love as hard as they can. The winner is whomever shows the most activity in the parts of the brain associated with love.



Some spoiler-riffic discussion after the cut. Behind the cut, I'll summarize, if you don't want to watch a fifteen-minute video.

The contestants: a seventy-five and seventy-two year old husband and wife, who've been together for fifty years. A sixty year old man who was going to focus on everybody and everything he'd loved in his sixty years, which apparently included quite a lot. A mid-twenties woman who was going to focus on her boyfriend. A mid-twenties man who was going to focus on his ex-girlfriend, whom he just wasn't over (ouch). An early-twenties woman who hadn't ever really been in love, but was going to do a chakra meditation about love in itself, not focused on a particular person. A ten-year-old boy, who was going to focus on his newborn cousin.

First, the coolest thing is how happy every single person is. Apparently, loving as hard as you can for five minutes makes you happy.

Including the guy who'd been focusing on his ex. Because he just . . . got OVER it. The implication is that he didn't actually light up his love centers much, after a minute or two, because he just basically loved as hard as he could, and realized that he was basically okay, and it was over, and he was okay with that. So, while he didn't have that amazing glowy look that the other contestants had, he certainly looked a whole lot lighter and happier than at the beginning.

Oh -- and if you didn't watch -- the winner was the seventy-five year old husband, and the second place was the ten-year-old boy.