(optical) illusions

What seems to be and what actually is: two different things.
Take this photo for instance.

These are three of my grand-daughters. It looks like they are playing in snow. Actually, this is Arizona in spring--and all that white is from the trees. Not snow at all (although the youngest kept saying, "Look at all this snow!").
Sometimes we get tricked by other illusions in life, too. People who seem to have it all together are really falling apart inside. Homes that look like the pages in a magazine may be (underneath the surface) dysfunctional and unhappy. What seems like success may actually be something else altogether, at least for a specific person.
Looking just at what seems to be, at the surface, is easy; looking more deeply is hard. It takes time. It takes commitment. And our lives are so fast-paced that such time and commitment aren't easy to come by. Besides that, most of us try to make the appearance be what we want people to believe--we don't want people to know the underneath. That makes seeing what is even harder.
I don't know why I'm writing this today. Maybe just an idea that, once again, slowing down and paying attention to people is what matters in life. More than all the surfaces and speed.