Why would Jet Li worry about something like “continued employment”, when he is already worth $250 million?
It’s like a rich person that grew up poor, they are constantly saving money. Of course they don’t really have to at this point, but that was their experience. All Jet Li might know is competition (just off the top of my head, he is under the shadow of Bruce Lee, similar to Jackie Chan, and the whole Hong Kong scene is second to America).
He respects his experience.
Is the implication that people don't learn new things from new situations/environments and are forever stuck modeling the world the way they did when they were young teenagers/adults?
I wouldn’t disagree, but I would question how widely applicable this is across cultures and socio-economic strata.
In particular it would be interesting to compare the commonly accepted folk wisdom (e.g. “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”) with a more objective analysis (if such a thing exists).
A soda drinking habit you can’t kick? You’ll mostly kick it once you get serious. The other stuff is probably going to take life changing events to alter.