Life experiences and personal growth. Opening yourself up to others (especially interesting others!) and entering their world is about the only way I've seen humans reliably grow and change as individuals.

Something I wish I would have learned and internalized at a much younger age!

Oh ok. Thanks for clearing that up. I thought you meant stuff like skydiving.

Can you give an example of "personal growth"? (I'm not sure what exactly that is, but I think I need lots of that.)

Maybe learning new things by hearing others' perspectives and experiences? I often need to remind myself to think more about how others feel and think since I'm accustomed to staying in my own head. Talking with somebody even briefly often enlightens me to interesting things

In my head I had an image of him twirling the end of his mustache as he said that.

STD and scabies mostly

He said "open mind", not "empty head"! :-)

Still, that's a risk, yes.