Valuable, Rather Than Useful Have you ever heard of this sentence from your teacher: Now we are young students and we should study hard to be a useful person in the society. How pathetic! We have spent decades to attend thousand of classes and pass tons of examinations to pursue the target of “being useful”. Will the society acknowledge our “usefulness”? The debate among two ancient scholars -- Huizi and Zhuangzi gives us some clues. When dealing with the same large gourd, Huizi found it no use to him so he broke it, while Zhuangzi believed that he can make a float on the river by this large gourd, open-mindedly and lightheartedly. What happened? What caused the different ending of the same gourd? Ladies and gentlemen, usefulness is not as you believed to be, for it has the limitation of relativity. It’s quite common that one stuff is absolutely indispensable to you while it is of no use for me. Under this circumstance, useful or not doesn’t matter that much. What we should concern is the value deep inside the body. Think about the ancient artifacts lying in the museum. They are the left overs of the long history. Time made them of “no use”-- even if some of them are tools, they are too old to play a part in daily life. Why do we collect useless stuffs and protect them? It is that the great value inside their bodies. Time has washed away the original function of old stuffs, however, it has given new responsibility to them, which is, being the carrier of history, as well as the continuation of human civilization. Admittedly, it is impossible to make everyone recognize the value of them, which is also the reason why some precious antiques was damaged, or even broken by people’s ignorance, we should insist that everything, old or new, large or small, all possess their own value. Look what Huizi did, break the gourd could possibly be the worst way. Thus in no circumstances, discrimination, violence and arguments should be conducted only because of “useless”. Only then can we believe that we are have reason to exist, for we are all valuable. What will you do to that gourd? No matter how you will use it, find out its real value would always be the first step. It’s same when treating ourselves, we should recognize our own value and improve it to make it easier to be seen. Therefore, when one day we finally grown up and being asked by the question: Have you became a useful person? My answer would be: I’m not sure whether I am useful, but I am more valuable.