Below is a poem I learned about in class, along with my crude translation of it. Our professor was kind enough to perform it. Yes, perform. It was pretty epic. The poem was written by the painter and writer 郑燮 (Zheng Xie) during the Qing Dynasty.
竹
[清] 郑燮
一节复一节，
千枝攒万叶。
我自不开花，
免撩蜂与蝶。
Bamboo
(Zheng Xie)
Segment upon segment, tens of thousands of leaves on thousands of branches.
I do not bloom, avoiding the bees and butterflies.
What the poem projects is an attitude towards the outside world. It is part of the world, but at the same time distant from certain parts of it.
What’s also important to note is that bamboos do, in fact, flower and bloom, but they do so only right before they die.
Flowering means attracting the external, or the unnecessary. Evidently, flowering also means death.
It’s an interesting parallelism. The inessential and death. Minimalism teaches us this same lesson. Let go.
Branches versus flowers. Leaves versus bees and butterflies. Bamboo is sure of itself. It knows exactly what to keep and what to avoid — a true sign of self-awareness.
Be bamboo, my friend.