There is something magnificent about a bonsai. It is small, but not dainty. It has all the dignity of a full-size tree, and the same indifference to the modern world.
Green spaces and growing things is standard advice for coping with urban life. The benefits of cultivating a bonsai are essentially the same as any houseplant - that’s about all the green space that is possible for many. For as long as the masses could save for the future, having your own garden has been a common aspiration. This is increasingly unachievable. Many urban lives will play out in tiny houses or flats, limited to what is possible there. If you have no space, or the parks are too threatening, or you can't get about like you used to, houseplants are a little bit of greenery you can have, even in the smallest home.
The aesthetics of bonsai are another thing. It is not just that pruning keeps them beautiful, or that even a commercially-made bonsai is unique. It is not just that there is an indefinable magic in paying attention to a growing thing. A bonsai lasts like few other things we can have. Just as your own garden links you directly to the changing seasons, a bonsai can connect you back to the longest cycles of human life. If you have pets, or children, or a spouse, a bonsai can outlast your relationship with any of them. It can outlast you, and your parents. Until very recently, humans felt the natural world as an immense powerful natural order that pre-existed us, and will outlast us. A bonsai is a reminder that this is still true. It is a experience of time different to the one the modern world depends on.
The modern world does not care for us. It would have you believe that caring for nothing, and having nothing to care for are acceptable ways to be. It seeks to hollow out our experience of living, and reduce it to that which can be monetised and traded. Humans are driven by meaning, and thrive in dense webs of sentiment and belonging. You can do without, but it is an impoverished life. In fact, the industrialised world is interested to ensure such webs do not develop. It is expedient that we are transitory, atomised, and replaceable. It is expedient that we do not experience our selves as producing value. It is expedient we feel our lives as cheap and thin, not as reservoirs of meaning. It is expedient we should be persuaded or pressured to throw them away.
You will not fix that by just having a bonsai tree, any more than by wearing a T-shirt with a slogan on it. Humans create value with their time and effort, their love and attention. A bonsai can take all the care you can give, and responds to it, if slowly. This is why there is more meaning in taking over a bonsai from someone who is no longer able to care for it. This is why, when you can no longer care for it, someone else will be happy to take it on.
If all you have is commercial entertainment, it is an impoverished life. A bonsai is a reminder that the modern world does all it can to separate us from the straightforward human wisdom about living and growing and aging that has accumulated over centuries.
You do not have to be artistic or creative to do any of this. You do not have to be a special person. If you can fill a pot with soil, water it, and prune it, that is enough. Being prepared to learn is enough.
from your dirt pot, and root, to the heaven above.