Zhuangzi was walking on a mountain
when he saw a great tree
with enormous branches and abundant foliage.
A woodcutter was standing beside the tree
without touching it.
When asked why he did not, he replied,
“It is useless.”
Zhuangzi then said,

“This tree will live out its natural term of life
because it is considered useless.

The taoists are nothing if not great story tellers. I suppose there is something essentially correct to this approach to learning. The listener or the reader  imagines him/herself to be standing by the scene, or even one of the actors described by the story. Here you might conclude the point is quite straightforward.

But wait!

Zhuangzi left the mountains
and stayed a night at the house of a friend.
The friend was glad to see him
and ordered a servant to kill a goose and broil it.
The servant asked,
“One goose can cackle, and the other cannot
–which one should I kill.
The host said,
“Kill the one that cannot cackle.”

Next day, Zhuangzi’s disciples asked him,
“Yesterday you said the tree in the mountains
would live out its years because
it was useless.
Now the goose in your friend’s house
was killed because it was useless.

Which would you prefer,
to be useful or to be useless?’

Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyunn Höchsmann and Yang Guyorong, Book 20 The Tree on The Mountain