A certain swordsman in his declining years said the following: In one's life. there are levels in the pursuit of study. In the lowest level, a person studies but nothing comes of it, and he feels that both he and others are unskillful. At this point he is worthless. In the middle level he is still useless but is aware of his own insufficiencies and can also see the insufficiencies of others. In a higher level he has pride concerning his own ability, rejoices in praise from others, and laments the lack of ability in his fellows. This man has worth. In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing. These are the levels in general;. But there is one transcending level, and this is the most excellent of all. This person is aware of the endlessness of entering deeply into a certain Way and never thinks of himself as having finished. He truly knows his own insufficiencies and never in his whole life thinks that he has succeeded. He has no thoughts of pride but with self-abasement knows the Way to the end. It is said that Master Yagyu once remarked, "I do not know the way to defeat others, but the way to defeat myself." Throughout your life advance daily, becoming more skillful than yesterday, more skillful than today. This is never-ending.

Cierto espadachín dijo en sus años de declive que en la vida de cada cual existen etapas en el estudio. En la etapa más baja, uno estudia, pero no obtiene nada de ello, y siente que tanto uno como los demás son torpes. En este punto se siente inútil. En la etapa intermedia, sigue sintiéndose inútil, pero es consciente de sus propias carencias, así como de las de los demás. En la etapa alta, uno se enorgullece de su propia habilidad, se regocija en el elogio de los demás y lamenta la carencia de habilidades en quienes no las tienen. Uno ya no es inútil. En la etapa superior uno proyecta el aspecto de no saber nada. Estos son los niveles en general, pero existe uno trascendental, la excelencia absoluta. El que llega es consciente de la infinidad que supone adentrarse profundamente en la Senda, y nunca considera haber alcanzado una cima. Tampoco alberga pensamientos de orgullo, sino que se dispone a recorrer el camino hasta el final con humildad.

The highest level of mastery is simplicity.

Most information is irrelevant and most effort is wasted, but only the expert knows what to ignore.

But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.

Some people begin to feel that things are pointless, that they’re helpless or worthless, or that no matter what they try they’ll lose anyway. These are a set of beliefs that must never be indulged in if we ever expect to succeed and achieve in our lives. These beliefs strip us of our personal power and destroy our ability to act. In psychology, there is a name for this destructive mindset: learned helplessness. When people experience enough failure at something — and you’d be surprised how few times this is for some people — they perceive their efforts as futile and develop the terminal discouragement of learned helplessness.

What is the use of studying much when I’m to see nothing at all?

For, finally, what is the rank man occupies in Nature? A nonentity, as contrasted with infinity; a universe, contrasted with nonentity; a middle something between everything and nothing. He is infinitely remote from these two extremes; his existence is not less distant from the nonentity out of which he is taken, than from the infinity in which he is engulfed. His intellect holds the same rank in the order of intelligences, as his body does in the material universe, and all it can attain is, to catch some glimpses of objects that occupy the middle, in eternal despair of knowing either extreme — all things have sprung from nothing, and are borne forward to infinity. Who can follow out such an astonishing career? The Author of these wonders, and he alone, can comprehend them.

This condition, the middle, namely, between two extremes, is characteristic of all our faculties. Our senses perceive nothing in the extreme. A very loud sound deafens us; a very intense light blinds us; a very great or a very short distance disables our vision; excessive length or excessive brevity obscures discourse; too much pleasure cloys, and unvaried harmony offends us. Extreme heat, or extreme cold, destroys sensation. Any qualities in excess are hurtful to us, and pass beyond the ranges of our senses. We cannot be said to feel them, but to endure them. Extreme youth and extreme old age alike enfeeble the mind; too much or too little food, disturbs its operations; too much, or too little instruction, represses its vigor. Extremes are to us, as though they did not exist, and we are nothing in reference to them. They elude us, or we elude them.

Such is our real state; our acquirements are confined within limits which we cannot pass, alike incapable of attaining universal knowledge or of remaining in total ignorance. We are in the middle of a vast expanse, always unfixed, fluctuating between ignorance and knowledge; if we think of advancing further, our object shifts its position and eludes

Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics

What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?

In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing .

Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist... Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough, and that makes all the difference. A life is never useless. Each soul that came down to Earth is here for a reason.

There are two levels of knowing a subject. There is the student who knows what the definition of a noun or a gene or a molecule is; then there is the student... who also knows how the definition was arrived at. There is the student who can answer a question; then there is the student who also knows what are the biases of the question. There is the student who can give you the facts; then there is the student who also knows what is meant by a fact. I am maintaining that, in all cases, it is the latter who has a "basic" education ; the former, a frivolous one.

The person who stops studying merely because he has finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what may be his calling. The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.

You should study more to understand that you know little.