Songfacts®:

• This song is about the healing power of forgiveness. John Cooper, Skillet's lead vocalist, was particularly inspired by his rocky relationship with his dad (which was the subject of the band's 2003 track "Open Wounds").
  
  "I think that as humans that that's a tendency, that we get mad and bitter at people and we don't like to forgive," Cooper explained. "But there's a healing that comes with forgiveness in your life and a freedom that comes when you forgive someone else ... 'The Older I Get,' that is a song about my relationship with my dad and feeling that I was kind of betrayed by him and all these bad feelings going on. But in the end, it came down to 'forgiveness.' In the end when I forgave my dad there was a real healing that came in my life, and the song 'The Older I Get' was about that and saying I wish I could go back... do it all over again and I would probably make that step earlier towards forgiving him because my life got so much better when I did."