On some village cart path in iron age China, two saplings are growing. One on the north side of the road, one on the south. The northern sapling, being well nourished in the full light of the sun, grows as straight and as tall as it can. The sapling to the south, in rocky soil and shaded by a farmhouse, grows low and twisted. Years pass, and the trees grow in their respective fashions. All the people passing down the road admire the northern tree for its strength and impressive straightness. The crooked southern tree goes mostly unnoticed, serving occasionally as shade for weary travelers. More seasons pass, until a travelling woodsman pauses between the trees. With an expert’s eye, the woodsman notices the fine qualities of the northern tree. After a moment resting beneath the low hanging branches of the southern tree, the woodsman uses his axe to harvest the fine northern tree for its straight and true timber.
As Zhuangzi describes, this is “the peril of being good lumber.” When the ambitious tree is nothing but a stump, the crooked tree remains, offering lazy shade:
No ax will ever cut short its life, nothing will ever harm it. If there’s no use for it, what hardship could ever befall it?
Zhuangzi’s words emerged during the Warring States period in China. As you might expect, it was a dangerous (Abunai: 危) time to be alive, and an incredibly good time to keep your head down. Military leaders faced constant danger, and government ministers could be executed for a single misunderstanding. In this context, Daoism makes a lot of sense. The best mode of self preservation was to fade into the background and let the conflicts rage on without you.
Some scholars dismiss the ambition-less credo of Daoism as belonging only to a particular time and place.
The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the contemporary moment is a less dangerous time to be alive. In the developed world, death often seems abstracted and distant. But, the real consequence of death (the very thing worth avoiding) remains ever present. Carefully considered, death is merely the robbery of time. When a middle aged office worker goes into cardiac arrest at his desk, observations about it being “too soon” and that he was “so young” are passed around amongst the bereaved. A shorter than anticipated life is the thing to be upset about, not that we never expected him to die.
Ultimately, dying an hour earlier and wasting an hour of life are roughly equivalent. Mortality is about utilizing the handful of moments we have to play with. In this way, mortal danger is ever present in the modern condition. Every worker trades their precious time for commodities. Most workers trade as much time as they can for as many commodities as possible. Some people enjoy “burning the candle at both ends,” effectively living a shorter life (Nama: 生) for more widgets and excitement. Just as some iron age Chinese embraced the dangers of combat and political conflict, the modern working man has chosen to lead a dangerous life.
Your hours in an a cubicle are an emergency. Rush hour traffic is a fire that needs to be put out immediately. Your job is killing you, one minute at a time. Don’t let the iphone 6 and a luxury sedan put you in a cage. The skills and experiences section of your resume is baiting the trap.
It is the patterned pelts of tigers and leopard that attract the hunters; it is the agility of monkeys and dogs that attract the leash-bearing captors.
Free yourself from the cage: Disguise your talents, hide your abilities, fade into the background. Let other people fill out forms and submit reports, you have 10,000 breaths of mortal life to savor.
Don’t trade your precious few heartbeats for widgets. Let go and want nothing. Enjoy each and every breath in the shade of crooked trees.