So they won't have a conversation with them about it. A person who's lightheaded and very frivolous will eventually get himself involved in immorality. When it comes to immorality, forbidden relations, you need a partner for that. A person cannot do it on his own. Two people have to commit the aveirah (immorality). When it comes to aveirot (transgressions), a person is usually embarrassed or bashful to include someone else in an aveirah. But when somebody is so friendly and so joking, it creates a light attitude, and there'll be less shame about talking to that type of person about sin. So if a man is acting like that with a woman in such a jokey way, eventually he'll be comfortable enough to proposition that type of woman for an aveirah. So a person should be very careful not to be too joking. So when it comes to immorality, that's the fence, in a way, for immorality. Don't joke too much. Rebbe Akiva will give other fences that protect other ideas. We call them a fence, a seyag, because just like a fence guards a field, the different ideas that he'll discuss guard what's sacred in each one of the teachings. Masoret seyag laTorah. Tradition, where we record the way the actual words of the Torah are spelled, is a fence for the Torah, because there's a tremendous amount of meaning and halacha (Jewish law) that we get from the spelling of words in the Torah. We learn different halachot from whether different letters are included, whether a word is chaser (deficient) or maleh (full), whether there's an extra vav (the letter vav), whatever it may be. The exact spelling that we have from the Torah is a tradition that goes all the way back to Sinai. So if a person is careful with the spelling of the Torah, he'll be able to extract and understand the real meaning of the halacha in the Torah from the words.
Maasrot seyag la'osher. If somebody gives maaser, they give a tenth of their wealth to tzedakah (charity), then they'll become wealthy. The Torah tells us: Aser te'aser. Tithe, give one tenth, you should give. You should give a tenth. So we learn from here that the double language being used, Hachamim (Sages) understand, is aser bishvil shetit'asher. Give ten percent and you're going to become rich. We learn from the pesukim (verses) that the same doesn't apply only to the regular terumot u'maasrot (offerings and tithes) in the Torah, but it applies to charity, tzedakah as well. The more one gives charity, the richer one becomes. So you want to have a fence to retain your wealth? Give more charity. Even though it's sort of counterintuitive, a person would think, “If I hold my charity, if I keep it, I'll become more wealthy. I'm not giving up my money.” But that's the point here. Hashem is going to be with you. If you give charity, you help out other people who are downtrodden, who are poor, who are needy. Hashem will be there for you in an even greater way. When you give away your money, you'll get more money.
Nedarim seyag la'perishut. Swears are a fence for abstinence. If a person wants to stay away from certain pleasures or enjoyments that are technically allowed, it can be difficult for him if he takes a neder. If he takes a neder, if he takes a swear, it'll become easier for him not to engage in that pleasure. Let's say somebody wants to make a neder; then he's not going to drink wine anymore. He knows that when he's drunk, he commits certain aveirot. So technically, drinking is not asur (forbidden). If he takes a verbal neder not to have wine anymore, then it'll become something that's asur. It'll become biblically forbidden to him. Therefore, that's guidance for a person who wants to abstain from certain things. And lastly, seyag laChochmah shtikah. A fence for wisdom is silence. Silence is a sign of a wise person. If somebody talks too much, it shows that they're lacking. They're lacking in wisdom, and they'll be involved in nonsense conversation. Somebody who wants to grow in wisdom will listen. He'll stop talking and he'll listen. And the more he listens and really understands what other people are trying to tell him, he doesn't have anything to prove. He'll just be gaining and gaining and gaining from their wisdom. And therefore, he'll be able to guard himself and become a wise person, show and display that he's a wise person, and then eventually grow into one as well.