I. Look at Your LinkedIn Title

Look at your LinkedIn title.

Are you a senior engineer, a PM, a designer, a founder, a manager, a director?

These are all your "instruments" — your professional identity, your deployable function, your "use" in a specific position.

In Chapter 28 of the Daodejing, Laozi asks a completely different question —

Are you this instrument, or are you more than this instrument?

You have these abilities, but you have never been only these abilities. A profession can matter deeply without exhausting the directions of a life.

Here I borrow “the junzi is not a vessel” from Analects 2.12 to read alongside Laozi’s “the uncarved becomes vessels.” The former is Confucius’s saying, not a line in chapter 28. It names this nine-part commentary because it captures a question I bring to the text, not because Laozi said it.

This chapter draws two portraits:

One for the reader — how not to let yourself become a single instrument. One for those who govern — how to use people without treating them as instruments.

Only together do these two portraits complete the chapter's full proposition.

II. Three Pairs of Opposites

This chapter opens with three pairs of opposites —

"Know the masculine, keep to the feminine, be the valley of the world.
Know the glorious, keep to the disgraced, be the valley of the world.
Know the white, keep to the black, be the pattern of the world."

You may accept praise and say “I am an engineer.” The problem is not acknowledging achievement but giving it final authority: “I already understand, so I need not listen.”

A concrete example —

Someone is praised at work: "You did great, you're amazing."

The person who operates from the position of glory — immediately takes "I am the praised one" as a fixed position; next meeting wants to be praised again; behavior begins revolving around maintaining the "praised" posture.

The person who keeps to the disgraced position — hearing the praise, does not plant a sign reading "I am already great"; next time, still acts according to the logic of the work itself, without adjusting to be praised again.

Chapter 24’s question still applies: does an identity help me act, or shut a door for me? Keeping the other side available does not require self-abasement or enduring humiliation. It leaves room for an untried direction even after praise. Past success is no fault; growth need not begin with denying yourself.

III. Three Directions of the Nurturing Position

After the three pairs, each has a closing phrase "return to W" —

Return to the infant.
Return to the unhewn.
Return to the inexhaustible.

I read infant, uncarved wood and the unbounded as three directions of openness: returning to basic needs and sensation, not exhausting a whole through classifications, and not treating an existing boundary as final. This is a reading map, not a system proved by word origins.

Returning to the infant promises neither bodily infancy nor the removal of years of tension through a breathing technique. It reminds the adult that before a job title comes a life that tires and needs care.

Imagine a hectic afternoon when you realize you have not had water for hours. Being the person who solves problems has made even tiredness hard to admit. The infant image need not tell you to quit working. It gives need a hearing again. Competence can say, “I need a break.”

The uncarved offers a slightly different reminder. At lunch, a colleague mentions music. You almost say, “That is not my field,” then discover you want to listen. Nobody requires an immediate career change. Something outside the professional boundary is simply allowed in.

The unbounded looks further: an interest you cannot yet name need not be shut out because it has no recognized place. You need not promise it will become an achievement. Let it exist first. Together, these directions do not demand unlimited development. They refuse to make today’s shape the final verdict.

IV. When the Unhewn Scatters, It Becomes Instruments

The closing passage of Chapter 28 —

"When the unhewn scatters, it becomes instruments. The sage uses them and becomes lord of the officials. Thus the great ordering does not cut."

This passage brings the whole chapter to a very concrete proposition —

Once the unhewn scatters, it becomes instruments.

The unhewn = the undivided whole. Scatters = is chiseled, negated, cut apart. Instruments = tools with specific functions.

Knives, bowls, carts, chairs — all are instruments. Each has a specific function, but none is the original undivided whole. Instruments have "use" but not "virtue" (de).

The tool image clarifies use, but does not prove that professional skill contains no de. How a doctor treats a patient or an engineer treats users can itself express respect. Professional work is not inherently inferior to a whole life.

The danger is making one job the only permitted direction. After twenty years in backend development, someone may still love it, or start learning music, caring for family or entering another field. Change need not condemn those twenty years; staying need not mean ceasing to become oneself.

Institutions and habits can make other directions harder to try. They never literally turn the person into nothing but a function. Refusal, reinterpretation and finding support remain human possibilities, not gifts bestowed by a manager.

V. The Sage Uses Them and Becomes Lord of Officials

The next line —

"The sage uses them and becomes lord of the officials."

I extend “using them” toward professional cooperation; the pronoun itself does not certify any management practice. Cooperation needs abilities, but also informed agreement, negotiation, reasonable limits and room to leave.

A manager can ask for backend work while taking seriously an engineer’s wish to change direction or take leave, rather than using promotion as personal control. Not every wish can be met, but disagreement must be discussable and departure need not be betrayal.

A teacher may support mathematical talent without announcing a lifelong destiny. Parents may offer opportunities without asking a child to complete their unfinished lives.

When every conversation ends at “What use are you to me?”, the other’s space narrows. What is ignored is not a wholeness that has vanished, but a person who has remained there all along.

Imagine an ordinary conversation. An engineer wants to try another direction next quarter. The manager’s first response may be concern: who will take over the current project? That difficulty is real; nobody needs to pretend otherwise.

But the next words can differ profoundly. “What would I do if you left? You cannot leave” is not “Let us see what a handover needs and which dates can move.” The second may not produce an immediate solution. It does recognize that the person opposite is not a backend interface available forever.

If the arrangement cannot be made, the manager can explain the limits and let the other person choose accordingly. Respect does not mean granting every wish. It means that limits can be explained and discussed, rather than calling the refusal of cooperation ingratitude.

VI. The Great Ordering Does Not Cut

“Great ordering does not cut.” Read this as a measure for organization: divide the work without exhausting the person in the division. It does not promise an immortal institution; it denies efficiency a license to swallow life.

Trapping people in roles can make trust and experimentation harder. Respecting their wholeness leaves conditions for revision, not a guarantee that everyone will succeed in a new field. Continuing the same work may also be their choice.

At each hiring, appraisal, promotion and assignment: am I discussing what this cooperation needs, or deciding what this person may be for the rest of their life?

VII. What This Chapter Gives the Reader

For yourself, keep room beyond a role. Love a craft, acknowledge strengths, and allow a day without new achievement. Wholeness is not a license valid only while you keep improving.

For others, remember that cooperation involves someone with plans you may not see. Respect is not a prize for versatility. Even a person skilled in just one thing cannot be equated with that thing.

This is what I take from reading the Analects saying beside this chapter: we may serve a purpose without handing our whole lives to that use.