Misperceptions

He just had such a different way of looking at the world. Once, while hiking along the rim of the gorge, they'd been overtaken by a passing rain shower. When it was gone, she'd look at what she thought of as a gray and brown desert and noted how barren it remained. He'd told her to look again. "Think small", he said. That's when she noticed the tiny flowers that seemed to have magically appeared with the rain. White ones, yellow, purple, and pink - most so little, hardly the size of her pinkie fingernail, that she hadn't noticed them against the immensity of the rest of the landscape. Yet now that she knew they were there, she saw how they carpeted the ground in soft colors for miles in every direction. "They're so delicate", she said with delight. "Think so?", he answered again. "Pick one."
Marlene stooped to do as told, but carefully drew her fingers back when pricked by the plant's thorns. "Another Indian trick," she grumped, sucking on the injured digit.
Jojola laughed. "The price we pay for misperceptions," he said.
"Sometimes we don't see beauty because it's not slapping us in the face and demanding that we pay attention. And sometimes, those things we find beautiful, or think of as fragile, may not be as harmless as they look."
"Couldn't you just have told me that, " she sulked, "my finger hurts."
"Some lessons are best learned the hard way," he replied with a smile.
"The point is that each person creates their own reality for the world."