What a headset cannot fix

The loneliness was not incidental; it was structural. I found it intolerable.

When the headset opened to a coastline, a resident began describing ports and ships from decades earlier. For twenty minutes, he was fully alive again.

But it also clarified something harder: individual experiences, however meaningful, cannot fix broken systems.

That realization drove me from a headset toward research.

The way we treat older adults in this country is one of the quietest injustices we accept. That bothers me deeply. And I am not willing to leave it alone.

Piotr Kierner

From an essay, 2026.