A machine asked me to prove I was alive.
Not in the grand philosophical sense. It was not interested in whether I had worked, failed, learned, paid bills, kept promises, crossed difficult rooms, or turned up when it mattered.
It wanted a code.
That is where a lot of later life now happens: not in decline, but in verification. We are asked to prove, again and again, that we are ourselves, by systems that have removed the one thing older people often need most from an encounter: judgement.
A capable person behind a counter could once look at a situation and say, “Ah, I see what’s happened.” That sentence is one of civilisation’s finer achievements.
A portal cannot say it. A portal says, “Something went wrong.”
The full piece is on The Old Grey Thinker:
https://theoldgreythinker.substack.com/p/i-spent-forty-minutes-proving-to
The wider library is here:
https://greythinker.gumroad.com