Book IX brings with it a quieter tone — one of preparation, letting go, and refinement.
Much of it feels like echoes of earlier lessons: about injustice, death, and the weight of our judgments.
But one section rose above the rest — and shook me in a way I didn’t expect.
🔁 Echoes and insights
- Marcus reminds himself that wrongdoing isn’t just about what we do — but also about what we leave undone. Silence and inaction can be complicit.
- He writes about how death will free him from certain personalities and duties — not with contempt, but with weary relief. Still, he insists that we should stay among the good while we can, and serve the world through principle.
- The idea of cyclical time appears: “the circular flow of the universe is always the same — downward, upward, from eternity to eternity.” He suggests time is less linear than we think — and maybe everything returns again.
- The Stoic idea returns: “you can free yourself from many anxieties — because all of them exist in your judgment.”
This is Viktor Frankl, 2,000 years early. - He reflects on loss not as subtraction, but as transformation — nothing is lost, only changed.
🔥 The highest form of prayer
But then, in section 40, Marcus delivers a passage that stops everything:
“If the gods have no power, why pray at all?
But if they do, why not pray for this instead —
That you may not fear what lies ahead,
That you may not desire what is unnecessary,
That you may not feel grief over what is taken away…”
He contrasts this with how most people pray:
“Someone prays: let me sleep with her!
You: may I not crave her love.
Another: may I be rid of this man!
You: may I not feel the need to remove him.
Another: may I not lose my child!
You: may I not fear the loss.”
That last line hit like thunder.
This is not weakness.
This is the ultimate strength.
The maturity to not ask for life to bend around you —
but for your soul to remain upright whatever happens.
It reminded me of something I’ve wrestled with in faith:
That God is not a genie.
And prayer isn’t about getting.
It’s about becoming — someone who is aligned with goodness, peace, and clarity,
no matter what the outcome.
It’s what Jesus taught in its deepest layer:
“Your will be done.”
And Marcus shows that even far from Bethlehem,
a Roman emperor could walk that same quiet road.
Sometimes, spiritual strength is not visible.
Sometimes it’s not even loud.
But it’s there —
when someone says:
“I don’t ask to be spared. I ask to be strong.”