One of my primary aims in life, since I’ve been old enough to think about such things, has been increasing my range of options: upping the level of freedom I enjoy, basically.

That can mean a lot of things, and there are many paths one can take in pursuit of more optionality, but for me it’s generally meant aiming to have enough money that I can afford the things I want and need, sufficient time so that I’m not constantly stressed and scrambling to fit things into my day, and a well-maintained body and mind so that I’m capable of doing the things I want to do and cognizant enough to think about the things I’d like to consider (and continue considering well into the future).

The main reason I’ve adopted this approach this core directionality is that it allows me to change as I grow, rather than trapping me on a single path toward a finite range of destinations.

We might optimize for monetary success, for instance, only to realize in our later years that we’d really benefit from more (and more developed) relationships, more time, and/or less stress. And we might have this realization from a standpoint in which pivoting toward those (perhaps long-held and ignored, perhaps newly developed) other ambitions are incredibly difficult or (seemingly) out of reach.

It’s also possible to cultivate new passions, discover new beliefs and ideals, and to experience disruptions that rewire our desires to the point that all the investments we’ve made over the course of our lives no longer apply; our assets becoming liabilities, our well-carved paths toward meaning becoming, overnight, mere deviations and distractions.

Aiming for a type of growth and a category of assets that allow for malleability, iteration, and change, then, seems (to me) prudent in the face of future unknowns, both of the external and internal variety.

One interesting thing about growing older is that our capacity to take advantage of the options we have tends to diminish (for many of us, anyway) because of how we’re shaped by society and biology.

Many of us stop listening to new music by the time we reach our early 30s, for instance, our old favorites carving well-worn paths into our sense of taste that makes exploring beyond a small catalog of existing favorites a non-trivial task. We have to want to expand beyond that cozy finitude, consciously remind ourselves to do so, and then put in the time and effort necessary to act on that intention—and that can be a tall order at a moment in life when there are countless other priorities demanding our energy and attention.

This tendency toward music seems to be of a kind with other sorts of exploration, as our teens-defining surge in “let’s explore and try new things” chemicals has well and truly subsided a decade or two later (again, for most of us), and society seems to reinforce this tendency, especially in our current era of the algorithm in which our sources of music (and other things) can, and often do, shape all of our future experiences based on our existing preferences, without us even asking them to do so.

I’ve been thinking about this degradation in exploratory impulse in the same way I’ve been thinking about the diminishment of bones and muscle mass I expect to experience in the coming years.

These losses are a locked-in reality for essentially everyone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t counter the aspects of our lives that limit our cultural inputs (the growth-inducing work and experiences that tend to catalyze internal growth and change) in the same way we might try to stave-off osteoporosis by changing our habits and taking some supplements, while reducing the impact of muscle-loss by adjusting our diets and exercise regimens.

It’s one thing to desire and even aim for a life of endless expansion (in the sense of personal growth and exploration), and another to implement such an ambition, though.

Because another thing that happens to us as we grow older is that we, by choice or as a consequence of unfeeling fate, are burdened with all sorts of responsibilities that are arguably equally important, and in some cases even more pressing and vital (caring for kids, keeping the rent or mortgage paid, supporting ethical causes, etc) than raw creative enlargement.

By the time we decide to question and maybe even break free from confining, curiosity-dampening boxes, then, our daily dance cards might already be full, at which point setting aside time just to seek out and listen to new music might seem like a waste of precious resources.

This is part of why I’m thinking about things from this angle, now, as comfort zone-breaking efforts are already more cumbersome than they once were, and I expect they’ll only become more so the older I get.

Ensuring these efforts are on my list of priorities, today, and investing in making them more habitual (and thus, over time—hopefully, at least—less effortful and draining) is thus vital to the plans I’m mapping and actions I’m taking.

The degree to which I’ll manage this (at least at the level I hope to) is still in question, but like planting a tree, I feel like the best time to have started thinking and behaving in this way was twenty years ago, and the next best time is right now.

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(My new book is about growing older with purpose and intent, and grabbing a copy is a great way to support my work!)