Art of Late Blooming

Some people know who they are. They have the great fortune of growing up with some sense of communal identity- either within a family or an area. They have a sports team and know the odd chants unique to a history they probably learned from an elder. A baton of sorts was passed to them, and with foundation built, they run from a platform that is sturdy and strong. From that knowing, trajectory is produced towards something. They are planted early and grow into something beautiful in due season. Others do not have such a story. They may have an unthinkable childhood, one of chaos and longing. Everything that could go wrong seems to go wrong, and yet, from that chaos produces an unlikely beauty. Planted in darkness, color begins to emerge. Many times, it is because of that very foundation, a clear contrast is established. The foundation becomes, “Whatever I dealt with before, I will do the opposite,” and their vision is established from their shattered past. And then there is the third plant- the kind that continually is shifted around in various pots. It was watered a few times and then moved to another window. Some locations did better than others. Occasionally, it would ridicule its owner by showing signs of real life, but in the end, it always withered back into the soil. It did not have proper foundation nor the chaos of strong roots. It just kept getting repotted until, in a forest of established plants, it decided to show signs of life again.

I wish I had known this earlier. An iris planted amongst sunflowers wouldn’t judge itself on the same schedule. It was 30 when I even felt the weight of gravity holding me firmly against the floor. It’s hard enough being an artist- a wandering observer cursed with aspirations judged by the whims of pop culture. Pair that as an artist born in Tokyo, growing up in Seattle, shipped back to Tokyo for further development in the teenage years, only to be dropped back off in Seattle to figure out life as a young adult. The natural inclination towards entrepreneurship, mixed with the past generations of artists before me, and pressed by the Japanese culture of subtlety, responsibility, and hard work made life confusing to say the least. It meant attempting to pay attention to rules that once so strongly existed in one culture but did not exist in the current one. It meant not knowing which one to choose, and whether or not I had made the dreadful decision to stay in one culture over the other. But mostly, it meant fighting the concept of value. Does an artist create something beautiful? Or do they figure out a way to balance beauty to the culture around them? By the time I left Tokyo and set foot back in Seattle to conquer college, I knew who I was. A few months later, I had no idea.

With anything, one must know the rules in order to operate fully towards potential. The problem for me was that the rules were always changing. Tokyo allowed the chaos an artist would need to thrive with the concrete foundation of a culture built firmly around order. It was only in my 30’s that I finally understood the rules of America: focus on you and you alone. By doing so, others get what they want as well. The brutal lesson forced separation from my natural inclination towards a communal perspective. I did not know what species of plant I was, attempting to root myself in areas foreign to my kind. I’d stay a while. I’d blend in but I’d never grow. No one wondered what I was doing planting myself where I did not belong. I found out the hard way by remaining in an infant stage while others flourished around me. In a way, the communal perspective never fully left me. I had to have a family in order to do something for them, rather than continue forth with myself as an afterthought. I had to grow. It was no longer an option.

Maybe you’re not where you want to be. You do not have the perfectly fine story of having strong roots, a structured path to college, and then an internship that led to a blossoming career. Maybe if you had that path, you feel the opposite; that rather than being a blessing, you felt it was a curse. “That wasn’t really me,” you may lament, and now you must start over to find out who you really are. I find it fascinating, and perhaps the strongest argument of God, that it must take us so long to understand ourselves. As time wears on, I have shifted my question of “how do I fit in the world?” to “how do I create an inner world where I belong?” And then “how do I change the world?” to “how do I change myself?” Jordan Peterson once said, “We are an amalgamation of our past, present, and future,” and though this may seem obvious, it never was to me. I thought, like a period of Coltrane or Picasso, that we were defined by certain stages of our life and not as a whole. Childhood is a foundation we cannot choose, and therefore we were to build upon it in a way that would make sense. “This is the canvas you were given,” and if the canvas had greens and blues, then we should keep within the color palette as a sort of responsibility to the owner of the canvas. Yet, we grow. We are not the same and cannot be.

I realize now that I was never meant to be a potted plant. My own garden resembles something of its owner. I scatter compost across the soil from the previous year and then I simply wait to see what grows out of it. Ever since I have done that, I have been pleasantly surprised at how much produce comes forth. This year, I decided to actually plant some seeds and the ones that did the best were wild flowers, and yes, they surprised me. I am not one to stare at the packages for every detail in tiny font. I make some room, I scatter some seed, and if it grows then it grows. So it was to my pleasure that one day I looked out and spotted a sunflower. In previous years, I had attempted to plant sunflowers intentionally, and though they are considered to be an easy plant that grows anywhere, I did maintain such an experience. The sunflower had to be hidden within a packet of others.

Maybe you’re blooming right on time. Maybe you’re a tree and not a flower and it would be unwise to judge yourself and scold yourself for not being what you are not. Eventually you will find the place in the garden where you grow best.