Is being useless a kind of freedom?

Zhuangzi tells it as a story about a tree so gnarled and knotted that no carpenter would touch it — which is precisely why it grew enormous and old while the useful trees were felled young.

The point is not a recommendation of laziness. It is an attack on usefulness as a measure of worth. To be valuable to others is to be consumable by them; the straight timber gets cut. Every quality that makes you the obvious person for the difficult project is also what guarantees you will be handed it, and being indispensable is a description of a trap as much as of a status.

This lands hard on anyone whose sense of self is built from being reliable. The competence is real. So is the fact that it has been priced, and that the price is the reason your calendar looks like it does.

Zhuangzi's alternative is ziran — being self-so, as things are when nothing is imposed on them. Not withdrawal from the world, but a refusal to accept its measure of you as the true one.

He is arguing with a specific opponent here, and it is worth knowing who. Confucius held that a person is made by service and role. Zhuangzi thinks that is how you get cut down.