* The keen-eared listener will note that the podcast recording says this was for October 4, 2026, but due to the events that happened at Cornell University, I bumped it and moved it to today, November 15th. Sorry for any confusion! *
I heard a parable once that stuck and never really did unglue itself from my memory. Made me feel better for some reason, made me feel a bit more understood, a bit more seen. Held, maybe.
Zhuangzi’s parable is a Taoist one, and as such packs a punch without wasting a whole lot of words. I’ll break down the basics for those of you who are short of time and fans of the whole brevity thing:
The parable speaks of an old twisted, gnarled oak tree. Speaks of a carpenter, a woodcutter, who passed by the old giant in search of better wood, of straighter trees. When asked why the axe never fell on its immense trunk, the carpenter answered, “It’s a worthless tree! Make boats out of it and they’d sink; make coffins and they’d rot in no time; make vessels and they’d break at once. Use it for doors and it would sweat sap like pine; use it for posts and the worms would eat them up. It’s not a timber tree—there’s nothing it can be used for.”
In its refusal to be useful in an expected way, to follow the convention and grow straight and tall, it survived. By being itself, exactly as it was, exactly as it was supposed to be, it grew big, it grew tall, and it lasted when a forest around it continued to fall.
I watch my dog Gilly spin once, twice, a third time around his bed each night before scratching a bit, and settling in for rest. Somehow, these two things are one thing to me. Somehow, they are connected.
Nothing wild compares itself.
There’s an exhaustion born from the real-time editing we humans do of ourselves on a daily basis. It’s a leak of the soul, a nail in the tire of our spirit that does not instantly burst the rubber that surrounds it, but allows for a seeping. Enough time goes by, we’re flat once more.
Why are we the only species on this planet that suffers from low self-esteem?
Why are we the only species to quiet our own voices in embarrassment, to catch our own laughter before it can escape our mouths? Why do we swap our thoughts for safer ones, why do we mourn the way we saw the world when just kids?
We carry, though we know not we do, the White-Out correction fluid to our own personalities. We keep it with us always, we self-correct towards some average version that we forget nobody ever asked for. We sand smooth all the edges of what makes us unique, round the corners lest they poke another.
We aim for what we think is the middle.
The Tao of Inner Peace says there’s another way, and I agree. They say this: “Tao people accept themselves as they are. They don’t waste their energy in self-criticism.”
As they are, as we are. How much energy is wasted in self-criticism? How much of it completely unwarranted, how much exists only in our own neuroses?
It speaks of nature, and of the inherent value of all things. Everything has its place.
“A rose, a daisy, a lark, a squirrel-each manifests its potential differently, yet beautifully. Each form has its own expression, each flower its own fragrance, each bird its own song.”
I hold the world normal up to the light around me, I analyze it like some alien thing. I see it as unfamiliar, see it as foreign, as weed to the garden of this life of mine, this growing thing that holds wild creatures gently.
I do not understand its pull, I don’t understand its potency, the allure of the drug of it all.
Insult, I have always seen it as, some little dig that I hoped wouldn’t be aimed my way. Normal the weapon, the ammunition inside it, the arrow or the bow, and I hoped I was not the middle of the bullseye it aimed at.
That oak tree was never normal, never perfect, never what others would call useful. Never fit into the mold the other trees fit, and looking at the picture of the Angel Oak in South Carolina, thinking of the hundreds of people that visit it daily, I’m reminded that people don’t go visit normal trees. They don’t immortalize them in story, poem, photograph. Normal trees become lumber, extraordinary ones become legend.
I think again of Gilly, the strangest, best, most quirky and delightful dog I’ve ever had. Think of the simple routine he calls a life, the turning around and around on the bed he sleeps in. I think of him with an absolute lack of low self-esteem, with anything that remotely resembles self-consciousness. He is, he just is, and as such is loved more than anything has probably ever been loved by all who know him.
Nothing wild compares itself, and maybe this is where I am a bit lucky, maybe this is where my autism once again insulates me from a life more ordinary. I don’t, and that’s the whole of it. I just cannot.
Even if I could, I wouldn’t.
This is what Tao talks of, this is what isn’t said aloud usually, so I’ll say it aloud here:
The parts that seem like they don’t fit, those that seem the least useful, the least straight, the least compatible for building a boat or a coffin, a door or a table from, those might be exactly what keeps the axe away. Stop sanding ourselves down, stop reaching for the middle that nobody is actually asking for you to find.
Grow like the twisted oak grows. Circle the way Gilly circles.
Let all your wrongness, all that banishes you from normal, be exactly what saves you.
I love you all.
Be good.
All that is crooked
is saving you from the axe.
Grow because of them.
