The Usefulness of Uselessness
Several Zhuangzi stories about rejected trees make the same point: being unsuited to ordinary use is sometimes exactly what allows a thing to survive.
In chapter 4, the carpenter Shi passes an enormous oak revered as a shrine tree and doesn't even look at it twice — its wood is too bitter for boats, too soft for coffins, wrong for any use he can name, and he calls it a worthless tree. That night the tree appears to him in a dream and turns the judgment around: it was precisely its uselessness for lumber that let it grow large enough to become a shrine, while the fruit trees nearby, valued for their yield, get their branches broken by the very harvesting that makes them "useful." Chapter 1 makes a parallel point about a giant, gnarled tree that no carpenter bothers with, which Zhuangzi says should be planted in a field of nothingness and enjoyed by lying beneath it doing nothing, rather than measured against a woodworker's needs. The recurring phrase for this idea, "the usefulness of uselessness," inverts the practical standard by which people typically assess worth, arguing that what escapes evaluation by conventional utility often escapes destruction by it too.
All know the usefulness of the useful, not the usefulness of the useless.
Zhuangzi
Written about in
- What Taoism says about death
The tree nobody could use grew old enough to become a shrine, while the useful fruit trees had their branches broken by harvesting. Escaping evaluation can mean escaping destruction.
- What Taoism says about envy and comparison
The carpenter walks past the enormous oak because its wood is too bitter for boats and too soft for coffins. In the dream that follows, the tree points out that this is exactly why it lived long enough to become a shrine, while the useful fruit trees nearby have their branches broken by harvest. Being passed over is sometimes what protects you.