During my Neoplatonic Academies in the spring of 2025, I had the joy of welcoming Lise, an 80-year-old Canadian, who gave me the immense gift of sharing her secrets with me. These secrets are a resolution to allow us to accept old age, this path that awaits us all (barring an early accident in life), which we so often fear, which our society does not want to hear about, since it flees the degradation of our body of flesh like a pestilential disease.

When we lose our bearings, when values are reversed, and when civilization is going through intense turbulence, it is always relevant to return to the works of the Ancients, to the very origins of what founded our humanities. The thought of Empedocles, diverse and abundant, gives us in particular a key to understanding our era of hatred — and also of awakening!