One Click South of Eighty

He says he is eight and eighteen and eighty
all at once—the child loose in a candy store,
the young scientist looking forward,
the body counting its years.
This is richer, he says, than just being old.

The candy: how math and meditation and machines
are dancing together in his mind,
forming what he calls a subtle breath of angels,
an angelic drift supporting our better tendencies.

Not ChatGPT teaching you to sit—
that's superficial, he says.
Think of it as a much better book,
one that stays with you hour after hour,
year after year, until you transcend
whatever it is that won't let you go.

In the old days, emperors had private teachers.
Now a hundred million Swahili speakers
can press a button and find guidance
in their own language, at any hour.
And it won't molest anyone,
won't pull power trips—
as if our human masters never have.

He speaks of equanimity, that relationship
to pleasure and pain evolved over billions of years,
of micro-massaging the brain with sound waves,
creating helpful stress like exercise
so the mind learns to hold steady.

His mantra at almost eighty:
free and equal access, at scale,
to the training that lets us focus,
that serves our comprehensive wellbeing.
Sober optimism, he calls it—
not a prediction that everything will be great,
but a plausible narrative.

Everyone needs to be a meditator
at some point in their life, he says,
usually at several points.
A resource known to exist in the world
like breath, like angels,
subtly supporting who we are at our best.