Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:
— Ruler Wei gave me the seeds of a large pumpkin. I planted them in the ground, and I grew a pumpkin weighing as much as two hundred pounds. If you pour water into it, it will crack under its own weight. And if I cut it up and make a vat out of it, then I won’t even have anywhere to put it. It turns out that my pumpkin is too big, and there is no use from it.
Chuang Tzu replied:
- Yes, I see you don’t know how to deal with the great! One Song man knew the secret of making an ointment that prevents hands from cracking in cold water. And he knew this because his family had been soaking yarn for generations. Some foreign merchant heard about this ointment and offered to sell it to that man for a hundred gold pieces. Sunets gathered his relatives and reasoned this way: “We have been soaking yarn for many generations in a row, but we have only saved a few gold pieces, let’s sell our ointment.” The merchant, having received the ointment, presented it to the ruler of the kingdom of Wu. It was then that Yue’s troops invaded the lands of Wu, and the Wu king sent his army to fight the enemy army. It was winter, warriors fought on the water. And it turned out that the Wu warriors completely defeated the Yues, and the Wu king, as a reward for the ointment, granted that merchant a whole inheritance. So, thanks to the same ointment that softened the skin, one acquired a whole inheritance, while the other soaked yarn all his life. It turned out this way because these people used what they had in different ways.
And you, dear one, have a pumpkin weighing two hundred pounds. So why don’t you make a great canoe out of it and set off in it on a great journey along rivers and lakes? And you are still sad that you have nowhere to put her. Apparently, there is such a thicket in your mind that you can’t even get through it!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru