Outlast

If you've ever wondered whether individuality is incompatible with the Taoist idea of oneness, I turn to this line from the Chuang Tzu:

An ancient gnarled tree: too fibrous for a logger's saw, too twisted to fit a carpenter's square, outlasts the whole forest.

While all things exist in oneness, one gives rise to two, and two to three, until infinite things come to be -- each with its own qualities and potential to fulfill. A tree that grows straight is cut to make timber. A tree with medicinal bark is stripped of its skin. The advantage to being useless is that it comes harder to be roped in to fulfilling the other people's purposes or desires.

A tree that lives for no other reason than to to fulfill its own existence the one that lives the longest, growing stranger and more unique every year.