My fascination with Bonsai trees started just like everyone from my generation: The Karate Kid.

Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi teaches scrappy Daniel Larusso about patience and inner peace by learning to sculpt, nurture, and define miniature trees. It’s a motif that carries through the entire original trilogy and still features prominently in the new series Cobra Kai.

I’d always wanted a bonsai tree, and a few years back decided it was time.

My wife Lindsey and I had just purchased a house with the intention of starting a family, and I thought a bonsai would be a great housewarming gift for the two of us, a living thing that our future kids would come to love and nurture as they grew up. Maybe even inherit, one day.

I discovered a beautiful store called Bonsai Gardens of Connecticut owned and operated by Victor Eng. Victor had previously founded Bonsai Dynasty, Inc in New York City and ran it from 1976 to 1991. It was the first bonsai store of its kind in NYC. He’s older now, but just as passionate.

It turned out his Connecticut location was merely 5 minutes from an apartment Lindsey and I shared when we were dating. I’d driven past the tiny shop for years without ever knowing it existed.

Words can’t describe how magical his shop is. I was immediately drawn to a specific bonsai. While I originally imagined purchasing a small, baby tree, Victor told me this tree was already 25 years old. He planted it himself.

Victor explained that most baby bonsai trees people buy in malls die within just a few weeks, because they require so much attention and know-how. Baby trees are delicate and difficult.

But when they’re middle-aged, like the one I wanted, they are much easier to take care of because their roots are deep.

“She is resilient,” Victor said.

“I’ll take her.”

The Hard Work

Lindsey loved the surprise and we moved with our bonsai into our new home.

We had no trouble learning how to water her, how to feed her, when to put her outside in the elements and when to take her back in.

But pruning? Trimming? The Karate Kid stuff?

That was too much.

I didn’t have time to learn, so I opted to bring her back to Victor for an annual clean-up. He loved it.

“After so many years with a tree, it’s rare that I ever see them again once they are purchased. I love it when owners bring them back to me.”

It was all going great…

Until COVID.

The Effects of Neglect

Between Lindsey being pregnant and the world shutting down, we didn’t bring our bonsai back to Victor in 2020.

By the fall I noticed she was getting overgrown. Her silhouette was fading as the branches and leaves formed bushes. Still, she was still growing new leaves, and that was a good sign.

I intended to take her in for a clean-up just as soon as the world was safe.

Then we had a baby and built a whole new lifestyle. And by lifestyle I mean we stopped sleeping. Bonsai was no longer a priority.

In the dead of winter I noticed that some of our bonsai’s leaves were drying up and falling off. I continued to water her, get her sunlight, and generally did the best I could. But my focus was elsewhere.

The months wore on and suddenly it was the summer of 2021. It had been over 2 years since she’d had any trimming. Bonsai was a mess.

I needed to make bonsai a priority again.

There, All Along

I told my assistant to block off my calendar for an entire day. No calls, no appointments, no meetings.

Bonsai rode in the passenger seat during the near hour-long drive to Victor’s shop. It had been two years, but nothing had changed. It still felt like magic.

“It’s been a long time,” I said. “We did our best during COVID to take care of her, but she’s obviously overgrown.”

Victor studied bonsai.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“What? Oh, yes! Of course! You are caring owners. She just needs a trim, that’s all. I’ll do a great job for you. Come back next week.”

I was eager for the week to go by, and when it did, I held my breath as I walked back into the shop.

“So, how does she look?”

“See for yourself,” he said.

And there she was. The same bonsai we’d bought years ago, the same silhouette. A little older, definitely wiser, but undeniably our tree. Bonsai didn’t need to be brought back to life. She wasn’t a lost cause.

She just needed a little bit of focused attention from someone who cared.

Trim It Back

75% of millennials and gen-z prefer texting to talking, and it’s clear why. Here’s renowned researcher Sherry Turkle describing the problem in her book Reclaiming Conversation:

“A young man in his senior year of high school makes things clear: “What’s wrong with conversation? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with conversation! It takes place in real time and you can’t control what you’re going to say.”

 

This reticence about conversation in “real time” is not confined to the young. Across generations, people struggle to control what feels like an endless stream of “incoming” – information to assimilate and act on and interactions to manage. Handling things online feels like the beginnings of a solution: At least we can answer questions at our convenience and edit our responses to get them “right.”

 

The anxiety about spontaneity and the desire to manage our time means that certain conversations tend to fall away.”

Many people struggle with real-time conversations because there’s “too much stuff” to do. You have to make eye contact, you have to fully focus, you have to listen to understand rather than respond, you have to ask meaningful follow-up questions, you have to talk enough to keep the volley going but not so much as to be overpowering.

Okay, breathe.

We’ve spent 18 months near-exclusively online. Our conversational bonsai trees are a bit overgrown, but that’s okay. Because just beneath the clumps of leaves is a beautiful outline of true human connection just waiting to be unearthed.

Conversations aren’t dead.

Human connection isn’t lost.

It just takes a bit of patience and focused attention to reclaim our relationships. When in doubt, remember the words of Mr. Miyagi:

“Trust. Concentrate. Think only tree.”