I was chatting with a physician about health issues. He spoke about one of his mentors, a retired doctor who remains active and fit. “The key,” his mentor told him, “is not to let the ‘old man’ in.”
Later, I discovered it’s a quote from Clint Eastwood. The backstory is that in 2018, the singer and songwriter, Toby Keith, was sharing a golf cart with the legendary actor. Keith asked Eastwood, who was 88 at the time, how he managed to maintain his energy and strength at his age. What was Eastwood’s secret?
And Eastwood told Keith, “I just get up every morning and go out. And I don’t let the ‘old man’ in.”
Keith loved Eastwood’s response so much that he wrote a song about it: “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”
I’m a proponent of not letting the old man in. I try my best to eat healthy, exercise regularly, and get enough sleep. Mentally, I do the stuff experts tell us to do to keep as sharp as possible, including having several projects to stretch my mind. (I’ll need to live well past 100 to read all the remaining books on my bookshelves.) And emotionally, I try to let go of resentments daily, forgive others, and love people with reckless abandon, especially those closest to me. While I’m not perfect in these endeavors, I still get up every day and go out there and try. It not only enables me to live a fulfilling life, but it’s the best strategy I know to keep the old man out.
But the brutal truth is, the old man will one day knock on my door and get in.
When Toby Keith wrote those words, he had no idea he would be diagnosed with terminal cancer that would take his life five years later. The old man will get in.
I hope you have come to terms with that truth.
How then do we live to the fullest, knowing that one day—whether he sneaks, slithers, or pounces—the old man will win, no matter how much we fight him?
There is a secret beneath the secret that Eastwood shared: there’s a backdoor of escape when the old man enters the front door.
This open secret is available for all to know; it’s tucked away in a book a man wrote to people in ancient Ephesus, then a thriving city located in modern-day Turkey.
Paul, the Apostle, wrote about putting off the “old man,” and putting on the “new man,” not someday, when we die, but in this present life, NOW.
The “old man/new man” terminology is from the King James translation. What Paul was telling the Ephesians to do was to throw off their old sinful nature—the former way of life— and let the Spirit renew their thoughts and attitudes, their “new nature,” in which they are “created to be like God—truly righteous and holy” (Ephesians 4:22-24).
Putting off the old nature (old man or self) describes a previous decision, a change of identity, and a new allegiance to follow Christ. Putting on the new nature involves daily access to the Spirit of God through prayer and obedience to God’s Word, so that our minds and hearts are continually being renewed by Christ.
Yes, the old man will get to me, but there is a deeper self, the real “me” that is untouchable to him, to the wilting and inevitable destruction of the physical and mental “me.”
My focus is on living joyfully in each moment of each day, rather than cringing in fear, hesitant to live God’s gift of life to the hilt, imagining I can hide from the old man’s arrival. As Eastwood’s character, Josy Wales, said, “Dyin’ ain’t much of a living, boy.”
Indeed, it’s not.
When the old man comes, I can say with all those in Christ, “Come in if you must, but I’m heading out the back door, where I’m going to live in the glorious presence of God, forever.”