A long time ago, a little girl moved with her family to a small farm house, and beside the farmhouse was a large field filled with wild flowers of every color.
As her parents were moving their belongings into the house, the little girl wandered into the middle of the field and said “Hello flowers, you live in a lovely field.”
To her surprise, the flowers answered back “And hello to you, nice girl. Yes, we do love this field, with its bright sun and rich soil. It makes us happy.”
Later that night at dinner, the little girl told her parents about the happy flowers, but her mother looked over at her husband and remarked “Hmmph. I like daisies, not weeds. Would you plant me a field of daisies?”
And so the next day, her father, ignoring his daughter’s protestations, plowed the field under and planted daisies. “What about the pretty red, and purple, and yellow flowers?” the girl cried.
“I can’t plow by the trash bins because the soil is too rocky.” her father replied, “The weeds can grow there.”
Sometime later, the daisies began to grow from their plowed furrows, and the field began to grow into a carpet of pure white, and her mother was happy.
In time, however, the little girl was delighted to find a pretty purple flower growing amongst the daisies and delighted in talking to it … until the day her mother spotted her bent over, whispering to this new found friend.
“Pick the weed”, her mother bellowed from the porch. Fearing what would come next if she disobeyed, she said “I’m sorry happy flower”, and plucked it out of the rich soil. And the flower was no more. And so time went on, and the little girl was forced to help her mother pluck the “weeds”, and soon she could no longer hear the flowers talk to her, not even the ones left by the trash bins. And over time, she began to see the beauty of the all-white field of daisies, as her mother did, and so life went on, and the little girl grew, until one day she had a child of her own.
And when her daughter was still young and innocent, she came rushing into the kitchen one morning, and cried out to her mother in excitement “momma, momma, in the field I found a pretty red flower, and it talked to me. It told me it was happy with its roots in the rich soil, and its leaves in the bright sunshine.” The mother paused in her cooking, turned towards her daughter, and said “pick the weed.”
And so several generations went by in this house, with little girls growing up to believe that the world looked best when covered with fields of white daisies. Until one day, something changed. One of these girls had grown up and was in the kitchen when her daughter ran to her, talking about the red, purple, and yellow flowers she found growing in the field. And on this special day, the mother looked out her kitchen window, and saw that it was true, that there were several colored flowers that had moved into the large field of rich soil, and she decided that the field was better for it.
That night at dinner she talked about the flowers their daughter saw, and asked “How can we call them weeds, if they add so much beauty to the field?”, and so the parents agreed that they should stop plucking the red, purple, and yellow flowers from their field of daisies, and their little girl went to bed happy that night.
The next morning the little girl, in her delight, rushed over to the trash bins to talk to the flowers there, for she had known this patch for a long time. “Mother and father says you can move into the big field, with the rich soil and bright sun”, she beamed, “just like you told me you wanted to do.”
“Yes, they replied, the soil is hard here, and there is not much sun, but we want you to plow the field, and plant us, just as was done for the daisies a long time ago.”
Somewhat confused, the little girl went to her mother and father and asked “will you plow the field and plant it with red, purple, and yellow flowers?”
“What?” cried her father, “What?” cried her mother. “I like the red, purple, and yellow flowers, but I’m not going to plow up all the flowers that are already in the field to plant new. Those flowers by the trash bin are free to move into the fields when they want, where they can enjoy the rich soil and bright sunshine, but we’re not planting them!”
“That’s right”, her father added, “long before there was a house in this valley, red, purple, and yellow flowers grew all over the hills and didn’t need any farmers to help in planting them.”
And so the next morning the little girl went to the patch of colored flowers by the trash bin, and shared all that her parents said. And the flower patch was not happy, and soon they and the little girl had nothing more to talk about, and not too long after, this little girl, like her mother before her, and her mother before that, lost her ability to talk to the flowers.
And so year after year, a few more red, purple, and yellow flowers move into the fields amongst the daises to enjoy the bright sunshine and rich soil, but the fields continue to glow mostly white. Except by the trash bins, where the soil is hard and where there is not much sun .