015: Straight Tree and Crooked Tree

“Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. And they grew next to each other. And every day the straight tree would look at the crooked tree and he would say, “You’re crooked. You’ve always been crooked and you’ll continue to be crooked. But look at me! Look at me!” said the straight tree. He said, “I’m tall and I’m straight.” And then one day the lumberjacks came into the forest and looked around, and the manager in charge said, “Cut all the straight trees.” And that crooked tree is still there to this day, growing strong and growing strange.” – Kneller, Wristcutters: A Love Story

This was drawn by A. Kelly. You can check out his portfolio at his blog.

Special thanks to my friend Erika for suggesting this quote to me. Do check out the mouth watering pastries she bakes on her blog.

This quote is from the movie, Wristcutters: A Love Story. I haven’t seen the film myself, so I can’t tell if it’s a good movie or not. However, judging from the description of it, I can tell it’s one of those existential movies about finding who you are and possibly the meaning of life. It’s also got an all round above average movie rating, so you might want to check it out.

I was wondering how to almost literally translate this quote/story into comics. I didn’t want to literally put in a story about trees. You might not see how the moral of the story can link up to your daily lives that way. So I decided, why not a story about architecture? Man-made things that are built upwards, look strong and tall, and grow all the time. Kinda like trees.

Although the comic has an architecture story, I believe there are many other parallels between this story and other life situations. For example in entrepreneurship, being ‘crooked’ can mean disruptive innovation. A ‘crooked’ company can survive the good and bad times with disruptive innovation and doing things differently. Or how about this different example still on the topic of entrepreneurship: the lumberjacks represent the disruption and changing times, and the ‘crooked’ tree represents the company that does things to survive the disruption.

This is just interpretation. I can already see how the story of the crooked tree can apply to career advancement too. Not to mention other areas of life.

If you have seen the movie and/or have your own interpretation of this quote, let me know in the comments below. It’s interesting to see what others can think up.