The Great Freedom

Here it begins (or will begin in just a few days).. two months without a schedule, without a bell, and without exams, and we hurry to build for the children a new schedule, almost as crowded as the one they just left. But Rav Kook explains that the soul too has a digestive system. When one more piece of knowledge, one more experience, and one more demand arrive without space, they do not necessarily accumulate into depth. Sometimes they blur one another. A child can study for a whole year, hear thousands of words, and go through meaningful experiences, and still not have had time to understand what of all this truly became part of him. Rav Kook elaborates in the passage that even the Torah was given with pauses between one portion and the next. The space is not empty time. Within it the mind processes, the will awakens, the character traits change, and life learns to adapt to the good it has encountered. Perhaps this is one of the great gifts of vacation. To sleep, to play, to be bored, to talk without rushing, to encounter home, friends, and ourselves. Of course there is no point in sanctifying idleness, but yes to accepting the need to stop, as an essential and important part of life.