Whose Hands Hold the Shears

There are trees kept in courtyards and temple gardens that look like the idea of a tree rather than a tree. Every branch placed, every layer of leaves catching the light. They’re beautiful, and they’re also entirely somebody else’s design. The tree didn’t want to be that shape. Somebody decided, and then returned every season to keep deciding.

I’ve started asking the same question about myself: which of my shapes did I choose?

Some of it is easy to trace. The habit of arriving early. The apology that comes out before anyone’s asked for one. Being the reliable one, the one who doesn’t make a fuss, the one who can be given the difficult client because she’ll cope. Somewhere behind each of those is a hand that held the shears: a parent, a teacher, a first boss who praised me warmly the one time I stayed until nine.

I don’t say that bitterly. Much of it was kind, and some of it was useful. A person entirely unpruned is not a wonderful thing either. We’re all cultivated by the people around us, and mostly they were doing their best with what they knew.

But cultivation and compliance look identical from the outside. Both produce someone who fits neatly into the space provided. The difference is only ever inside: whether you’d choose this shape again now, as the person you currently are, with the information you currently have.

So the question isn’t whether you’ve been shaped. You have. It’s whether the shaping is still going on without your say-so, and whether the hands still doing it are yours.

There’s one more thing about those courtyard trees. The shape has to be maintained. Stop cutting, and the tree starts reaching in whatever direction the light actually is. It looks untidy at first. It looks like something’s gone wrong.

I think a lot of us are overdue an untidy season. Not a dramatic one. Just one branch, left alone, allowed to go where it wants and see what happens: the opinion said without softening it first, the invitation declined without an excuse attached, the thing you’re bad at done badly in public.

It will feel like a mistake. It usually isn’t. It’s just a shape nobody supervised, which is not the same thing at all. If that sounds daunting, I’ve written about the gentler version in learning to take up space kindly.

Hold the shears yourself. Or put them down for a season and see what grows.