The Child Within

If I were old I would be discouraged.

In the Ethics of our Fathers, Elisha Ben Avuyah teaches: One who learns Torah in his childhood, what is this comparable to? To ink inscribed on fresh paper. One who learns Torah in his old age, what is this comparable to? To ink inscribed on erased paper."

I get the first half of the statement. We want to encourage the young to learn while their mind is still fresh and impressionable; but why the second half of the statement that puts down the older learner? Were we not educated on the story of Rabbi Akiva, one of the all time greatest Torah scholars, who began to study Torah at age forty? If Rabbi Akiva would have learnt about the "ink written on erased paper" would he not have been discouraged from learning and the Jewish people would have lost one if greatest minds?

The answer is as simple as it is profound:

The Mishnah is not telling us to learn when we are a child; rather to learn like a child. Not to avoid learning when at old age rather to avoid learning like an older person.

You see, the old person has seen it all. Often, He feels he's got all the answers to all the questions  A new idea cannot creep into his mind unless it squeeze trough his existing knowledge. His subconscious mind is not interested in revolutions, it is interested in ideas that confirm, and conform to, his existing knowledge.

The child, on the other hand, is curious, open to new insights, and intrigued by the mysteries of the universe.

So when your mother told you to "always remain a child", she may have been trying to articulate the Mishnah's point. She wasn't telling you to keep playing in the sand box, she was saying: "you may have a PHD at the end of your name, but next time you pick up a book, do so with an open mind". 

You'll have plenty of time to evaluate and assess at a later point, but at the moment, read like a child.

The Essene of Pleasure

The Hebrew word for affliction - נגע - is made up of the same letters as the Hebrew word for pleasure - ענג. The book of formation, the first work of Kabbalah ever to be written, explains the highest level one can achieve, the greatest pleasure one can experience, is from transforming a negative experience to positivity. Transforming the affliction to pleasure. 

Students of Tradition

Two interesting things happen in the second chapter of the Ethics of our Fathers: 1: The Ethics stops telling us that each Rabbi it quotes received the oral tradition from the previous rabbi (unlike chapter 1 which emphasizes who each rabbi received the oral tradition from). 2. Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakay asks his students to offer their own insight (unlike chapter 1 where the teacher is the one doing all the talking).

Perhaps these two are related. After the period of Shammay and Hillel many disagreements broke out amongst the Rabbis. The reason for all the disagreement was that post Shammay and Hillel some of the oral tradition was lost, thus many points needed to be decided through using logic (obviously based on the principles of the oral tradition) rather than through tradition alone.

That is why Rabbi Yochanan turns to his students, because while tradition comes from the previous generation, insight comes from your students.