When I was a kid, I was envious of the "cool" guys. The jocks, the good looking guys, wearing the designer clothes, with gel in their hair, going from one girlfriend to another. [OK - I must confess, the gel thing never appealed to me]. I wasn't considered a geek but was also not particularly cool. Somewhere in the middle. I was not cool but lukewarm. I guess I was cool in the sense that I was an extremely poor student [when I actually came to class] and lived for sports. I wasn't cool b/c I didn't smoke, drink or engage in the forbidden behaviors that the "truly" cool guys did. Plus, I wore hand me downs [third boy after two] and not the latest styles. [Not that we were poor. Just a bit frugal].
Now I have grown up. A little. [My getting whiter and whiter beard can attest to that]. I learned that the "cool guys" don't have better lives than everyone else and often the opposite. Instead of girlfriend to girlfriend - sometimes wife to wife. The gel dries up. The clothing goes out of style. The athletic talent recedes. As does the hairline. The lean, strong physique turns flabby. They have problems with their kids, health and parnassa like everyone else. So I don't envy them anymore. Just today I found out that one of the COOLEST kids in my time if not THE COOLEST is divorced. Boy was he good looking and BOY did the girls love him. All those girls married someone else and long ago forgot about him. Only his ex-wife thinks about him - and not fondly. [BTW - Some people sign off their emails "fondly". To me - sounds contrived and artificial].
But there is another thing. All the "coolness" in the world but if this guy can't read a line of Tosfos if his life depended on it then it isn't worth anything. And many of the cool guys in fact grow up and never learn how to read a Tosfos. So I'll pass. Let him drive his Lamborghini and live in his fancy house in Miami Beach with his pool in the back yard. The pleasure one gets from learning Torah properly far exceeds any pleasure he will get. And that is in THIS world. What about the next - where it COUNTS.
And the עיקר שבעיקרים of life is to have good middos and frankly I didn't find that coolness necessarily went along with good middos. So what is it worth??
Cool shmool.
