If a textbook is eye-opening, that's partly due to the textbook but it's also because you were at a moment in your understanding of that subject, that your eyes

If a textbook is eye-opening, that's partly due to the textbook but it's also because you were at a moment in your understanding of that subject, that your eyes were ready to be opened and just needed a trigger. For me, TAOCP in high school was a big one. I don't claim to have understood very much of it, but spending evenings in the library bashing through the parts I could make sense of gave a total change in perspective.