This story showed up in my feed last week from CBS News, “On the Road with Steve Hartman,” about a NYC photographer who was creating a series of portraits based on having strangers posing for him in slightly intimate positions that belies the fact that before that moment these people didn’t know one another. The reporter was astounded that the participant actually felt a connection after this little experiment. When I was taking a child-development course for my teaching credential I ran across a video series about the brain that noted how newborn infants tended to respond to smiling faces, almost any smiling face. But after a few months, differentiation set in where the infant recognized family members or those who had been around, and only responded to those smiling faces and responded negatively to strangers. What this implies is our innate ability to connect with one another, if we just take a moment to reach out beyond our little tribe. Happy Monday.