I would always encourage people of any age not to be so quick to follow other people's truths but to search and follow your own moral code and live by your own integrity, and mostly just be brave.
That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.
I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.