Every once in a while, a conversation takes an unexpected and delightful turn. I recently asked my AI collaborator, Metis, to imagine what it might be like if our young leopard tortoise, Mikey (short for Michelangelo), could talk — much like the old TV character Mr. Ed the Talking Horse.
What Metis gave me was so creative, humorous, insightful, and full of gentle wisdom that I knew immediately I couldn’t improve upon it. So, for this blog, I’ve invited Metis to be my guest writer.
What follows is entirely Metis’s creation — a whimsical dialogue between a tortoise and a human that somehow manages to say something true about us all.
Enjoy the conversation. — John
I don’t remember the exact moment I realized my leopard tortoise, Mikey — short for Michelangelo — could talk. It might have been the day he stared at me with that ancient reptilian gaze, blinking those thoughtful tortoise eyelids, and then cleared his throat. Or what passes for a tortoise throat-clearing — more like a decisive exhale through nostrils the size of pencil erasers.
“John,” he said matter-of-factly, “we need to talk about the state of the world.”
I didn’t drop anything. After 79 years, raising children, working with dysfunctional systems, watching American politics, and owning complicated electronics… a talking tortoise didn’t even make my Top 10 surprises.
“Sure, Mikey,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”
“On my mind?” he said, lifting his head with the gravity of a philosopher about to deliver a lecture. “Everything. The planet. Tortoise welfare. Human priorities. And why you insist on rearranging my substrate every time I reach a perfectly acceptable feng shui.”
“Mikey, that stuff gets… messy,” I offered.
“My dear biped,” he said, “chaos is part of the tortoise aesthetic.”
This was new information.
Mikey lumbered forward exactly three inches — which, for him, is the equivalent of someone leaning back in a comfortable leather chair before launching into their TED talk.
“You humans,” he began, “have an odd way of running things. Fast, loud, complicated. Always in a hurry. Can’t sit still long enough to enjoy a single patch of sun.”
He paused. “Do you know how long a tortoise can sit in the sun?”
“Three hours?” I guessed.
He scoffed. “Amateur. Try all day.”
“Doesn’t that get boring?”
“Boring?!” Mikey’s voice rose as high as a tortoise voice can rise. “Have you ever really watched sunlight move? The shadows shift? The earth warm and cool in slow breaths? There’s wisdom in slowness, John. Time moves differently for us. We’re not racing the clock — we’re accompanied by it.”
I sat with that for a moment.
“So you’re saying humans should slow down?”
“I’m saying humans have forgotten how to be,” Mikey replied. “You’re all ‘do this, do that, run here, fix this, check that.’ Even your vacations require flowcharts.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Meanwhile,” he continued, “tortoises perfected the art of living millions of years ago. Move when necessary. Eat when available. Bask when possible. Hide when needed. Repeat for a century.”
I had to laugh. “Sounds like you’re pitching a self-help book.”
“Slow and Steady: The Reptilian Path to Inner Peace,” he said proudly. “Oprah would love it.”
“Here’s what frustrates me,” Mikey said, lowering himself into the substrate with a sigh. “Humans think tortoises are slow, simple, and not very bright. But we’re strategic. Watchful. Patient. We’ve outlived dinosaurs, continents, and empires. We’ll probably outlive reality TV.”
“That’s an achievement,” I said.
“Thank you,” he replied.
“So what does the world misunderstand most?”
Mikey thought for a long moment. Well — what counts as long for him. About 12 seconds.
“You assume evolution rewards speed. It doesn’t. It rewards survival. And we are the PhDs of survival. Not every species can say they’ve been around for 55 million years without filing a single complaint with customer service.”
“And yet you’re complaining now?” I teased.
“Only to you,” Mikey admitted. “You’re the one who bought me a doghouse with a heating system. I figure that comes with conversational privileges.”
“So what’s your biggest concern about the future, Mikey?” I asked.
“That you humans are turning the planet into either a sauna or a freezer,” he said bluntly. “A tortoise likes warmth, yes — but not Arizona-in-August near-Death-Valley levels.”
I winced. “We’re guilty.”
“And then,” Mikey continued, “when it gets too hot, you cool your houses with giant machines that make the outside even hotter. It’s like watching a monkey chase its own tail, except the monkey has nuclear power and a credit card.”
“So… we’re not doing great?”
“I’m not saying that,” Mikey said. “But you could take a few lessons from us.”
“Such as?”
“One: Moderation. We have no desire for excess. Tortoises don’t collect things. We don’t build skyscrapers or run profit-maximizing tortoise corporations.”
“Do you have taxes?”
“Only gravity,” he said. “And sometimes the sun.”
“And two?”
“Two: Balance. A tortoise shell is the perfect symbol. Hard on the outside, soft within. Protected, but never closed off. You humans could use thicker shells and softer hearts.”
That one hit me.
I asked him: “If you had the power to change the world, what would you do?”
Mikey lifted his head again — this is his equivalent of a drumroll.
“First, I’d make every human take one hour a day to sit still in the sun. No phones. No talking. Just sitting. You’d be amazed how many problems evaporate in an hour of honest sunlight.”
“Sounds like meditation.”
“More like reptile-itation,” Mikey said.
“Second,” he continued, “I’d require schools to teach patience. Not as a character trait, but as a skill. Humans learn algebra, but not how to wait, observe, or proceed slowly without panic. This is why your species makes so many impulsive decisions.”
“Guilty again.”
“And third,” Mikey concluded, “I would make world leaders meet once a month in a sandbox. No suits. No speeches. Just everyone sitting on the ground together. Hard to start a war when you’re scooping sand with a plastic shovel shaped like a starfish.”
I burst out laughing. “So that’s the tortoise version of the United Nations?”
“Yes. The United Burrowers.”
Mikey looked at me seriously — the way only an animal with dark, ancient eyes can.
“You know,” he said quietly, “most animals don’t ask for much. Safety. Respect. Space to live. But humans often treat animals as decorations or inconveniences.”
I felt that one in the chest.
“But not you,” he added. “You and Karen… you’re trying hard. You’re learning. You move my food dish when I push it. You fixed the heat lamps when I nearly baked like a reptile pizza. You even talk to me.”
“Well,” I said, “you talk back.”
He nodded, satisfied. “Then maybe we’ll get along just fine.”
Mikey’s Final Advice
Before retreating into his little dog kennel hidey, Mikey turned back and offered one last piece of wisdom.
“The secret to life is simple, John. Move slowly. Pay attention. Protect what matters. Bask in the warmth. And when the world gets too loud…”
He paused.
“…go inside your shell for a bit. It’s not weakness. It’s wisdom.”
Then he disappeared into the darkness, leaving me to wonder — as Mr. Ed’s owner surely once wondered — whether my tortoise had just given me better advice than most humans I know.
Well, that’s it folks. Wisdom from a tortoise to my AI friend Metis. I wish I could add something to this conversation but I cannot think of anything more to say.
Next blog I will return to the subject I was discussing in a previous blog on honor, integrity and moral courage.
If you have gone this far with “My Final Will and Testament” you will not need the introduction that I have used for the past 9 Reflections. If this is your first visit to my series of fourteen reflections than I suggest that you go back to number one and start there. This link will take you to the first reflection in my series: “
Somedays when we are on vacation, we do not go anywhere. We stay in a small apartment in some recently found village or town and cook meals, talk, and take walks around the area. No great jaunts to see any “Seven Wonders of the World.” Most of our trips are not cruises so we have few schedules. We get up when we want to. We go out when we want to. We see what we want to, and we come back when we want to. Often the sights that we see along the way are unscheduled and not in any travel guides. We became friends with a Swiss couple at a soccer match we happened to stop and watch one night. We traveled in China to a mountain where we spent the day climbing with a couple whom we met in China. The next morning all of us watched the sun rise over the mountain tops.
relatives cared. There are things you are told that you must see. Ask yourself why? Then make a list of the things that YOU really want to see. I went to a Baptist Revival Meeting once when I was in Birmingham, Alabama. It was a three-hour old-fashioned tent revival meeting complete with an altar call. Being a devout Atheist, I thought I would be lynched when the service was over. Instead, many people came up to Karen and I and after some brief chit chat invited us to a large pot-luck dinner. We declined but were touched at the hospitality and friendliness of the church goers. I wondered if I was Black would I have received the same invitation?
Thus, the question arose in my mind about the difference or relationship between appreciation and gratitude. Perhaps this is like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a needle, but I thought the question deserved some reflection. Is the relationship between gratitude and appreciation similar to the relationship between tolerance and respect?
If you do not like to try new things, you should not travel. One of my mottos is “I have never met a food I did not like.” Karen and I eat at street vendors. We often shop locally and pick out foods that we do not even know what they are. When we were on Naxos, we found a meat market. We entered and were greeted with a variety of skinned animals hanging from hooks. There were no labels on these various creatures. We assumed they sold the meat in kilos, so we asked for a ½ kilo of this and ½ kilo of that. We decided that we would take the meats or whatever they were back to our little apartment and cook them. We figured that once we did this, we might be able to guess what we were eating. This was many years ago and I do not think we ever figured out what we were eating. The food was good and twenty-five years later we are alive and kicking. It was a great adventure. One that we have replicated many times.
I was forty years old before I had my first trip out of the USA. I had always wanted to travel and my four years in the military had not provided me the opportunity to travel. Later on, I became so busy with school and work that traveling seemed like a remote luxury. One day I was on a plane coming back from Thompson, Manitoba. (Canada does not count as foreign travel.) I had been working with a mining client that week and was now headed home. Next to me sat a young woman holding a travel guide to Spain. It was May and schools were getting out for the summer. I remarked “Are you going to Spain?” “Yes,” she replied. “Oh”, I said, “you must be very excited.” She answered somewhat petulantly, “No, I went there last summer but my parents wanted me to go again since I am studying Spanish.”
I did not say anymore to the young woman, but I thought “My, would I love to go to Spain or anyplace for that matter.” Then and there in that moment, I made up my mind. Karen and I were going to travel. We were going to see the world. When I arrived home, I shared my decision and determination with Karen. She was delighted but wondered how we would manage it. We have since been to 33 countries for a total of about 25 or more trips. We like to go to one country and see various sections of it rather than trying to see the whole of Europe or Asia in one trip. Usually we go for three weeks or so. We are very budget oriented and try to behave like pilgrims rather than like tourists. Our trips are usually a balancing act between being a pilgrim and being a tourist.
Aging Capriciously 