Don’t Pray for Results, Ask for Strength
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dip in the pool of stoic wisdom and a guide to using its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s choice belongs to Marcus Aurelius. In Meditation , 9.40, he invites us to stop praying for what we want and work on our problems from a different angle:
One man prays, “How can I sleep with this woman?” Your prayer is: “How can I get rid of the desire to sleep with her?” Another prays, “How can I get rid of this person?” You pray, “How can I stop wanting to get rid of him?” Another: “How can I save my little child?” You: “How can I learn not to be afraid of losing it?” Etc. Read all of your prayers at this stage and watch what happens.
Here’s another translation:
Try another prayer and see what happens: instead of asking “how can you sleep with her,” try asking “how to stop wanting to sleep with her.” Instead of “a way to get rid of him” try asking for “a way not to wish him dead.” Instead of “a way to avoid losing your child,” try asking “a way to get rid of your fear of him.”
What does it mean
Instead of praying for certain results in your life, pray for freedom from desire, anger, jealousy, and fear so that you can deal with whatever comes your way. So many life’s problems are out of our control, so stop dropping hope and take control of your life.
What to take from this
Even if you don’t pray to God, we all pray for results in one way or another. We all whisper: “Please …” in difficult times, hoping that luck will take care of us. But gods or not, Aurelius thinks we better take responsibility and ask for what is under our control. He says:
But you can say, “The gods have entrusted this to me.” Isn’t it better, then, to use your own power in freedom than to take a slavish and sluggish concern for something you can’t control?
Indeed, when you pray for strength, resilience, and the ability to navigate the turbulent waters of life, you are calling out to yourself as you would to an invisible deity (“Read all your prayers in this queue and watch what happens”). Your request will change from passive pending to active. You start thinking about how to help your prayer. So, don’t ask for a better life, ask for the will to make your life better.
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