We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age; for old age brings with it its own defects.

Each stage of life comes with its own difficulties, and carrying the previous set along means fighting on two fronts. The heedlessness or vanity that was survivable at twenty-five becomes expensive later, when stiffness and caution and a narrowing world have arrived to keep it company. Nobody gets a clean slate, but you can decline to pack everything. The work of each decade is partly setting down what belonged to the last one.

Name one habit you have had since you were young that has stopped earning its place. Let this be the year it goes, rather than the thing you still explain at seventy.