"This basically consists of Marcus Aurelius repeating, "Get it together, Marcus" to himself over and over again over the course of 12 chapters.

SPOILER ALERT:
-The time during which you are alive is very very brief compared to the time during which you did not exist and will not exist.
-People who wrong you only do so from ignorance, and if you can correct them without being a jerk about it, you should do so.
-You are a little soul dragging around a corpse.
-Whether or not things injure you lies in your opinion about them, and you can control that opinion.

That's about it.

The fascinating thing about these philosophical ideas is that if they were expressed a single time, they might seem profound and solid and convincing. But repeated over and over like a rosary, you feel that Marcus is struggling against really serious grueling daily doubt -- that these are things that he wishes to be true, not things that he knows to be true, normative rather than descriptive statements. Which makes for a fascinating and subtext-y read, especially given his history. "