September 29, 2026

The Divine Returns Home

I am striving to give back the Divine in me to the Divine in the All.

Plotinus spoke these words in 270 AD while dying of a wasting illness that had driven away all but one of his students. His companion Eustochius arrived just in time to hear this last testament, later recorded in Porphyry's biography that introduces the Enneads. The words describe death not as extinction but as a homecoming, the divine spark within him rejoining the greater divine order of the cosmos. Stoics teach the same lesson from another angle, that death is certain and its hour unknown, so keeping it in view clears away pettiness and restores urgency to ordinary hours. Memento mori is practiced daily, not as morbid dread, but as a habit that sharpens gratitude and focuses effort while time remains.

A principle of Stoicism: Memento Mori →