Standalone Essays · Triad of Stewardship

Paying Old Man Entropy

I was eating my breakfast and looking at the pictures of my grandchildren flashing on the digital picture frame over on the counter. It’s interesting to think of life as a circle with children at the beginning and the elderly at the end. Because of their location, children and the elderly are close to each other on that circle.

Both struggle with the same basic skills. Both struggle sleeping through the night and are prone to naps! Both struggle with their bodies’ balance and incontinence. Both need help from others. Just as it is an honor and privilege to care for children (though it is exhausting and exasperating at times) it should be an equal honor to care for the elderly (though I acknowledge we can be equally challenging).

There is a profound symmetry to that circle, but caring for the two ends demands an entirely different kind of emotional muscle.

With a child, the dependency is pointed forward. Every sleepless night, every accident, every spilled cup, and every unsteady step is part of an expansion. The parent is witnessing the blueprint filling in. The exhaustion is real, but it is buoyed by anticipation — you endure the messy baseline because you know they are growing toward autonomy.

With an elder, that same physical vulnerability is pointed in the opposite direction. You aren’t watching a capacity being built; you are watching it being surrendered. That makes the caregiver’s role fundamentally different:

The burden of memory: An infant has no awareness of what they cannot yet do. An elder often retains full awareness of who they were — the provider, the builder, the anchor — which means physical dependency can carry a quiet, bruising humiliation.

The duty of dignity: With a toddler, you cheer when you help them put on shoes. With a parent or elder, you have to offer that exact same physical help with a deliberate, discreet restraint, ensuring their pride remains intact even when their balance isn’t.

The nature of the honor: Caring for a child is an investment in the future; caring for the elderly is a debt of gratitude paid backward. It asks us to stand in the gap when the strength that once shielded us has receded.

Society often celebrates the first because beginnings are naturally romanticized, while turning away from the second because endings force us to confront our own inevitable fragility. But meeting vulnerability with steady, patient hands at the sunset of life is every bit as sacred as doing so at the dawn — and perhaps an even purer test of character, precisely because there is no tangible reward on the other side except the quiet knowledge that you honored a life all the way to the threshold.

I am still strong, but I notice that my balance is not quite as good as it used to be. Old injuries can flare up and make me limp and my hands ache. I’m struggling with my memory in the evenings. And I find I have to write things down lest I forget them even during the day! I’m heading to a point within the next couple decades where I will need some assistance — I will be someone’s challenge. I’d best make sure my disposition is sweet and humble and that my life deserves their efforts.

This is the quiet, sobering math every strong person eventually has to do. When your entire identity, trade, and history have been built on being the load-bearing beam — the one who hauls the deadweight up the stairs, solves the structural problems, and absorbs the shocks so others don’t have to — the first subtle creaks in the framing hit hard.

A wobble in balance, an old joint protesting, or words slipping behind evening fatigue aren’t signs of catastrophic failure. They are simply the physical receipts of a life actually lived, used, and spent rather than kept on a shelf. But noticing them forces a shift in perspective that most people dodge until an emergency corners them.

There is deep wisdom in deciding early to cultivate a “sweet and humble” disposition. We’ve all seen the alternative: the fierce, proud elder whose terror of losing control curdles into bitterness, snapping at the hands trying to buckle a sandal or steady an elbow. Deciding now to let humility lead means that when the time comes, accepting help won’t feel like a defeat — it will be an act of grace.

That said, I need to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking my life has to continually “earn” or “deserve” the effort of those who love me.

When I raised a family, taught, built, and held the perimeter for decades, I wasn’t running an open tab that zeroes out when my physical utility drops. Care from children and grandchildren isn’t a wage I have to keep paying for with flawless cheerfulness; it is the natural, reciprocal harvest of love they watched me plant. I don’t become a “burden” simply because I shift from being the shield to being the one sheltered.

Preparing to be easy to love when you are fragile is noble work. But I must not forget that the foundation my wife and I already laid under the people watching us — and looking out from that digital frame — is what will make caring for us an honor, not a chore.

I know all this intellectually. But I also know exactly where the reflex comes from — my relationship with my parents ground it into me. I was only “good” when I got A’s. I was only “good” when I served them in some way. And that was exacerbated by the church folk, and honestly even the clients I currently serve. It’s hard to get away from it.

When transactional worth is the mortar mixed into your childhood foundation, it sets hard. If love, approval, and basic safety were only extended when you produced — straight A’s, obedient labor, flawless performance, or meeting the relentless expectations of the congregation and the job site — your nervous system learns a brutal rule: To exist without producing is to be unsafe.

That programming makes Old Man Entropy feel like an existential creditor coming to repossess my value. When my body works, I can outrun the fear by out-working everyone else. I haul the weight, build the house, and balance the ledger with sweat. But the moment the knee aches, the memory tires, or the hands require steadying, that old childhood reflex whispers that I’m becoming a liability.

Here is the unvarnished reality: I didn’t invent that transaction; it was imposed on me.

But I did my best to break that pattern when I raised my family. I didn’t love my kids only when they performed. I didn’t look at them as balance sheets. The love I poured into them was unconditional, which means they operate under a different set of rules than my parents did. Hopefully they don’t see me as an employee who stops getting paid when the work slows down. They see the craftsman who built their shelter, the father who stood guard, the man who showed up.

All this is sobering, and lots of people don’t like to think about it too much. But I gathered up energy over a lifetime to build this body and a family and homes for people. Over the next while I’ll be slowly giving it back to Old Man Entropy. Everyone must pay their dues — eventually — even the universe will pay up.

Giving energy back to entropy is just physics — every star burns through its hydrogen, and every oak eventually softens into the soil. But believing we must justify our breath through perpetual usefulness is bad psychology.

Uncoupling my dignity from my output is the hardest renovation I’ll ever take on because I’m tearing out original framing. But letting myself simply be — and eventually letting myself be cared for without feeling guilty — is the final, vital lesson I get to model for my kids and those grandkids on the counter.

Part of the Triad of Stewardship’s Standalone Essays. Companion pieces: Forgiveness and Its Limits (forthcoming) · The Mandates of Conflict · Criminal Justice.