What's the use of growing moss? None. I love it

My hobby always makes my friends laugh: I grow moss.

In one corner of the balcony I keep a dozen shallow trays. What grows in them is moss collected from mountainsides, the feet of walls, the cracks between the stones of old alleys — white, green, velvety, clustered, the smallest piece no bigger than a thumbnail. Every morning I mist them with a spray bottle, crouch down, and look for ten minutes, watching the fuzz stand up in the light.

My friends' question is always the same: "What's the use of that?"

My standard answer: "None. But I like it."

I first fell for moss three years ago, on a hike in the forest. The guide pointed at a rock face and told us to crouch. In a hand-sized world of green, there was moss, lichen, tiny mushrooms, and a beetle making its way across, all of it a complete universe. "Moss is the quietest plant in the world," he said. "No flowers, no fruit, doesn't fight for sunlight. It just slowly spreads its own green." I crouched there a long time, and something noisy inside me went quiet.

I went home and started growing it. That's when I learned how thoroughly useless it is. You can't eat it. You can't sell it. It won't surprise you with a flower. It grows slower than anything — a few millimeters of height a year. It's even fussy: it can't dry out, it can't be waterlogged, too much light turns it yellow, too little turns it black. I have to check it daily, adjust its position, control the water, like a nanny looking after a small green child.

And it's exactly that fussiness, and that slowness, that got me hooked. I work in financial data, and my working day is all speed: fast reports, fast commentary, fast decisions. At home, the moss is the only thing that's slow. It looks the same today as yesterday, and tomorrow it will look much like today. My care for it produces no short-term feedback, and that is precisely the rest I need. In that corner I don't have to be effective, don't have to produce, don't have to become better. I just crouch there, spray water, and look at green.

A useless hobby is the soul's darkroom. It doesn't produce anything for you. Its only job is to take you out of the world where you must be producing, so you can breathe.

In my third year of growing moss, something useful happened, though I still refuse to give the moss the credit. My colleagues say my temper has improved and I'm less combative in meetings. I've noticed that I've picked up a moss perspective: I no longer demand instant results from everything, and I've started to understand the strength of spreading slowly. I've also met a group of moss people from all over the country through it. We trade notes on soil mixes, how often to mist, and the ethics of collecting — yes, there is an ethics. Don't take from a large patch. Pinch off a thumbnail's worth. Leave enough for it to spread.

Last year my five-year-old niece came over and crouched in front of the trays for an entire afternoon. "Auntie, when will they grow up?" she asked. I said, "They're growing all the time. You just can't see it." She thought about it and said, "Then they're slow-motion trees." Those words hit me. Slow-motion trees — a child's language, more accurate than any popular science.

These days my balcony is what my friends call the most useless corner of the house, and what I call the most useful one. The world of financial data earns me a living. The world of moss lets me live. I want both.