I really enjoy bonsai. My parents got me three bonsai for Diwali this past year which was a lovely gift. However, one of them, a Fukien Tea Tree, has been testing my focus.
The Fukien Tea Tree before I made the cuts. As you can see, the trunk line isn’t clean and the branches are growing a bit too crazily.
Because it’s winter here on the east coast, I’ve needed to keep the Fukien Tea bonsai indoors, which means it sits on a window-sill right next to my desk. I’ve been watching a lot of bonsai videos on YouTube for the past few months, and they all talk about having a clean trunk line. One trunk. That trunk then branches, and your eye should be able to easily follow everything the design of the tree. However, my bonsai was not doing this. There was a small amount of trunk line, and then BOOM… it divides into three, with no clear dominant trunk line. It was frustrating me because it wasn’t looking like a bonsai. I knew I needed to make some cuts, but I was very nervous and very scared.
As a designer, it’s a fun but daunting problem. I face these issues every day, but in pixel form. Trying to identify was dominant, subdominant, and subordinate*. But pixels can be undone. A little Command + Z magic and voila, mistake unmade. But in tree form the stakes seemed… higher. What if I make the wrong cut? What if it makes the tree look worse?
This brought to my mind a quote:
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.
-Steve Jobs
In school, I didn’t quite understand what he meant. But as my career and life have steadily progressed, there are a lot of things I want to do, but I can’t because of time and energy. I could do all of it, but then I’d do a shitty job. And that would make me feel terrible, and then I’d want to stop. So by focusing my energy and time, and by saying no, I could really do the things that I love.
And the same thing holds true to this tree. Having a messy trunk line, excess branches that are growing all over the place… this doesn’t help the tree grow in a way that allows it to excel. Make hard cuts and difficult decisions will help it grow and help balance its energy. (By the way, it took a long time to come to this conclusion, which included a lot of bonsai videos.)
So at this point, I had mentally come to the conclusion that I needed to make some big cuts and prune this tree. But I was still a little nervous. After all, this is the first time I’m making these cuts on this tree! So I practiced on a blueberry bush that really needed some pruning. The stakes felt much lower here so I was able to get some practice in.
Practice done, I switched to the Fukien Tea. With the knowledge I had learned from some videos, I was able to make the decisions I needed to. And what do you know! It looks much better and I’m far happier with it! It’s growing better, and overall feels like it’s a step in the right direction for this bonsai.
Focus is something I really struggle with, especially when it comes to my life. Going through this process was a really important lesson for me to remind myself that I can’t do everything. Sometimes, I need to cut the branches that aren’t doing me any good so I can focus growing in the ways I want to.
Here it is after some cuts. I’m much happier with the tree now!
*This was a lesson I learned in college from one of my favorite professors. Probably the most important lesson. Maybe I’ll write about this in the future at some point.