A young man sits in the beis medrash trying to learn and learning is hard. Even once he discovers the geshmak it remains hard. It may seem strange but throughout one’s career of learning Torah enjoyment and difficulty continue to co-exist. Failure is an ongoing aspect of learning for everyone even for the greatest sages. Every time one doesn’t understand a gemara or a Tosafos or a Reb Akiva Eiger that’s a mini-failure of a kind — and who likes to fail?
But the very reality that failure is a built-in feature of limud haTorah can be a source of chizuk and a tool for achieving ultimate success. The fact that as Chazal (Gitin 43a) teach ein adam omeid al divrei Torah el ihm kein nichshal bahen a person will not comprehend words of Torah unless he first stumbles over them has two ramifications.
First it’s the nature of Torah that makes an initial failure of some sort inevitable. Part of the pain of failure stems from the message that people with less-than-perfect self-esteem — which is most of us — internalize as a result: “If I was better/smarter/more talented I’d have succeeded.” But knowing that the system is “rigged” for some degree of failure means our stumbles and falls don’t have to deter us from plowing ahead .
Moreover if the failure to understand and retain everything we learn is the inevitable prelude to the understanding and retention that will follow that means that all such failures are actually rungs on the ladder of success in learning. They’re not the problem but part of the solution.
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