The tree every carpenter walked past

The tree that every carpenter refused to touch is a thousand years old.

A carpenter I know told me the good wood never lasts. Straight grain becomes a beam. Clean lines become a pillar. Fast growth goes into the kiln before its twentieth year. What's left standing on the ridge is the crooked ones, the hollow ones, the ones with scars.

Carpenter Shi was walking with his apprentice past Quyuan when they came on an oak tree standing at a shrine. It was so large its shade could shelter several thousand oxen. People stood around it the way people stand around a street performer.

The carpenter kept walking without turning his head.

His apprentice caught up and asked how a tree like that could be ignored. Shi said, it's useless. Make a boat and it sinks. Make a coffin and it rots fast. Make a door and it sweats resin. Make a pillar and the worms get it. Nothing can be made of it. That is the only reason it's still alive.

Then Zhuangzi adds the part people usually skip. The useful trees were cut up into furniture long ago.

Most of the anxiety I meet in coaches comes from one sentence: I have to be useful. But who holds the definition? Usually not the person doing the growing.

You didn't get the promotion this year. You didn't buy the place. You didn't ship the thing. That's not a verdict on whether you're worth keeping. You're still growing.

MOJOWAY asks a different question on purpose. Not what are you for. What are you becoming.