Be More Useless

Years ago, a friend of mine dated a guy who could never hold a job. She loved him, but whenever he had money, he spent it on his passion: buying old-fashioned letterpress machines. Eventually she threw him out. Not long after, he got a call from Cooper Union. They were looking for someone to curate a special exhibit of … old-fashioned letterpresses.

The moral of the story: whatever weird thing you’re into, keep doing it.

We often look at our passions and think, That’s useless. How does that fit into the world? But the opposite is often true: when we refine our lives beyond what others can logically understand, people become more drawn to what we’re doing.

Literature offers a good analogy. If a character says, “I loved her,” we understand him, but we don’t care. But if he says, “I loved to watch her line up the teaspoons as though preparing an orchestra,” we start to pay attention.

Meditation teaches the same lesson. Each breath is unique: completely different from the one before it. To fully experience the breath, we have to drop more and more of our thinking and learn by feel. This ability to learn by feel has many uses in daily life: living creatively, nurturing loving relationships, and sensing where your life wants to go.

Chuang Tzu tells a story about a gnarled tree. The other trees mocked it for being bent and strange. But when lumberjacks came looking for timber, the crooked tree was the one they didn’t cut down.

Be more useless. Pick up beautiful discarded things. Make random playlists. Interview your grandparents. Catalog the birds outside your window. Notice where your attention goes when it doesn’t have justification, and bring even more attention there.

One day, you — and the world — will find reasons in those pointless places.

Photo by Keith Dotson