Something I think is both more difficult and more important than learning new things is unlearning things that used to be true but aren’t any more, or things we believed were true in the past but now believe are not true. Part of what makes this so difficult is that a lot of our beliefs are “cached”: you determine what you believe about a thing based on your best current knowledge, but don’t automatically re-examine all of those beliefs when your best current knowledge changes.

I’ve met some older folks who have felt really vibrant and different from most people their age. All of them have that quality of actively re-evaluating long-held beliefs based on new evidence. It’s inspired me to highly value and practice this ability.