Originally Posted by
Walter S
I agree. Rather than "imitate" the word that comes to mind for me is "inspire". I sometimes find examples of older people that are living a lifestyle I can learn from and modify my own so as to follow a similar path - to "imitate" them. Examples of people that live like you might want to are important.
Certainly in my case I started to bike commute in part due to seeing colleagues doing it. In those days (about 1992) bike commuting by white collar workers in Toronto was quite rare, now it is common.