1 Hui Shi was an old friend of Zhuangzi.
One day, the king gave me some seeds of the giant calabash.

2 I planted them, and the calabashes turned out to be huge, One of thme alone could hold five gallons.

3 But they were weak, and if you filled them with water, they'd break as soon as you picked them up.

4 And they couldn't be cut in half to be used as ladles, because the ladles would be too shallow.

5 So, the calabashes may have been big, but they were too big, so big that they were useless. So I just threw them away.

6 Oh, that's too bad, You just don't know how to use big things.

7 These calabashes are so big, you could make nets, and then put the calabashes inside the nets.

8 Then you could tie the nets around your waist to make a little raft so you could float on the water.Isn't this fun?
Why do you necessarily have to use the gourds to hold water?

9useful
useless
Useful and useless are relative terms. Hui Shi was set on using the calabash to hold water, never thinking that he could use water to hold the calabash. When one way of thinking doesn't work, try another, more clever way to go about it. This is what's called "using the useless."