CHUANG-TZU

Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu:
"I have a huge tree, 
People call it a shu.
Its trunk is full of knots and bumps so that you cannot apply a measuring line to it.
Its branches are so twisted and crooked that you can use neither a compass nor a square on them.
Were I to put the tree by the roadside,
No carpenter would stop to look at it.
Now, your talk is big and useless.
So everybody alike turns away from it."
Chuang-tzu said:
"Apparently, you've never seen a wildcat or a weasel.
It crouches down and hides, waiting for its prey to drift by.
It leaps around east and west, venturing high and low.
Then it gets caught in a trap and dies in a net.
Then again there is the yak as big as a cloud covering the sky.
No doubt it has the ability to become big, but can't catch even a mouse.
Now you have a huge tree,
And you are worried that it's useless.
Why don't you plant it in the Village of 
Nothingwhatsoever, the field of the boundless void, and lie back by its side, doing nothing?
Or doze off idly in its shade?
Axes will not cut your life short, 
Nothing will harm you.
When you are of no use,
What misfortune will come your way?
     -- Chuang-tzu, a third or fourth century BCE 
Chinese philosopher, a follower of Lao-tzu.

Hui-tzu dismisses the tree because he thinks its useless; he can't make any money or any object from it. He accuses Chaung-tzu of being useless, too, spouting all sorts of crazy things no one is interested in.
     Chaung-tzu is unfazed. Would you say a wildcat is useless because it will die? Is the yak useless because it can't catch a mouse? No. If you fear you are useless, do you think something terrible will happen to you? It won't. So plant your big tree in the Village of Nothingwhatsoever, where there is no thought of "useful" and "useless, of "this" or "that". Go there yourself and forget the world with all its value judgment and opinions.  There is only the boundless void in which everything exists. Lie back in the shade of the tree - that shade is its use, after all. 

Chuang-tzu's most famous story: 

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.