Like 51.3 million other people, I tuned in and watched the 2024 presidential debate. Mind you, this kind of thing is a rarity for me; I just about never watch any television at all. This is because of my view of time, not based on moral issues, though a case could perhaps be made for that. I simply have better uses for my time, as well as a huge list of things that I need to do. Every hour of TV is one less hour of spending meaningful time with family, studying, writing, praying, working out, or doing some needed project around the house or church.

But since the leadership of the free world is on the line, I figured this one would be worth the time.

I do not recall any other times in all of my years that there was nearly unanimous agreement on how things went during one of these debates. Most of the time, the entrenched sides have already prepared their speeches and sound bites as to how things went before they actually even happen. This one was an extreme aberration; both sides saw President Biden’s weakness and confusion and are either capitalizing or panicking accordingly.

It would take my weird brain, I suppose, to somehow start there and end up in the Garden of Eden.

I often think of the years that followed the fall. Adam and Eve were created to be immortal, never aging, never weakening, never dying. But in one moment of disobedience, all of that changed. The effects, though, would take years to fully hit – aging is like that.

There doubtless came a day when Adam went to dig a furrow in the ground, and his back suddenly locked up. I can only imagine what it was like as Eve rushed to his side to try to help him rise, with him gasping and trying to explain what was happening. There doubtless came another day when Eve looked down into the still waters and noticed something odd on her head: humanity’s first gray hair.

The long, strong strides of Adam through the years got just a touch shorter, his back more stooped, and he shuffled from time to time rather than picking up his feet. I wonder how many times Eve had to remind her husband, “Pick up your feet, dear”?

Eve probably gained some stubborn weight that she could not seem to rid herself of, no matter how carefully she ate. She started noticing crow’s feet around the corner of her eyes. Adam, though, perhaps did not notice those fine lines since his own eyesight was getting pretty blurry by then. The invention of eyeglasses was still around 5300 years away, so there was no way for him to get any help with that, either.

At some point, Adam’s mind likely began to feel the effects as well. Names of people he had known for years were forgotten; details of events were mixed and muddled. His family may have had to take turns making sure he did not wander off.

Getting old really stinks. Some do far better with it than others, but no one escapes all the effects. Three thousand years or so after Adam, Solomon in Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 would lament the plight of aging. He would describe hair turning white, teeth falling out, weakness overtaking the body and mind. He had seen this in his own Father, David, who once was young and strong in battle with Goliath, then got old and had to have a nephew save his life in battle. In his very last days, in 1 Kings 1, he was shivering and unable to rise and could not be kept warm by any amount of covering.

It is coming for all of us, these days of weakness and dependency. It has been this way since Adam himself. And that leads me to ponder, what kind of old person do I eventually want to be?

I want to be the old person who kept lifting weights and hiking and doing martial arts and playing sports and who, because of that, was able to have a vibrant role in the life of grandchildren and great grandchildren. I want to be the old person who, as long as he had his right mind, kept challenging it; reading and studying and learning new things, never stagnating.

I want to be the old person with no regrets of missed opportunities, the one who set aside fear and embraced adventure, the one who did daredevil things that, if it were not for the pictures, no one would believe.

I want to be the old person who got sweeter with age rather than more caustic. I want people to laugh and smile and be made to feel special when they are around me. I want kids to know that I listen to them and I love and appreciate the drawings they give me.

I want to be the old person whose family never gets devastated by horrible secrets from the past. I want to have lived my life so purely and so transparently and so well recorded that they never have to say, “He wasn’t what we thought.” I want to be the old person who leaves behind sayings and writings that match what they saw in my life.

I want to be the old person with a lifetime of interactions with God – answered prayers, specific guidance, blessings that could only have come from His hand. I want to be the old person who faces death with no fear, knowing he is about to step into the presence of Christ.

We will all get old if we live long enough; the only question is, what kind of old?