Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge.
By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little.
By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more.
With a bachelor's degree, you gain a specialty.
A master's degree deepens that specialty:
Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge.
Once you're at the boundary, you focus.
You push at the boundary for a few years.
Until one day, the boundary gives way.
And, that dent you've made is called a Ph.D..
Of course, the world looks different to you now.
So, don't forget the bigger picture.
Keep pushing.
The roji, the garden path which leads from the machiai to the tea room, signified the first stage of meditation—the passage into self-illumination. The roji was intended to break connection with the outside world, and to produce a fresh sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in the tea room itself. One who has trodden this garden path cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above ordinary thoughts. One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of civilization.
...Thus prepared the guest will silently approach the sanctuary, and, if a samurai, will leave his sword on the rack beneath the eaves, the tea room being preeminently the house of peace. Then he will bend low and creep into the room through a small door not more than three feet in height. This proceeding was incumbent on all guests—high and low alike—and was intended to inculcate humility.