Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta was a sage of the late second century, a younger contemporary of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — known simply as "Rabbi," the compiler of the Mishnah around 200 CE. For many years Rabbi Shimon had walked to Rabbi's academy to study. But one year his visits stopped.
When he was asked why, Rabbi Shimon gave a cryptic answer. The tradition preserves it as Gaster's exemplum No. 145.
"The distant has become near," he said. "And the near has become distant. And two have turned into three."
No one knew what to make of it. It sounded like a prophecy, or a riddle from the Book of Proverbs. His colleagues pressed him.
At last he explained. The distant has become near — meaning his eyesight had failed, so that to read he must now hold the page close, where once he could see a scroll across a room. The near has become distant — meaning his hearing had failed, so that voices close to him now sounded far. And two have turned into three — meaning his two strong legs now required a cane for support, a third leg he had not needed before.
He was describing old age. Not the way a poet describes it, but the way a geometer describes it — a series of small reversals in the physical coordinates of the world.
The exemplum preserves his words because the rabbis loved what old Rabbi Shimon had done with his diminishments. He had not complained. He had not cursed his failing body. He had turned it into a small Torah text, a riddle a student could solve, a saying his colleagues would remember long after his legs gave out entirely.
Even old age, in Rabbi Shimon's hands, became a chance to teach.