Marcus Aurelius writes not about happiness but avoiding pain

Marcus Aureliu affirms that everything that happens is divinely ordered for the best. And given his Stoic teaching, he finds that in this best of all possible worlds there is little to love. He frequently comments on the vanity of existence, the insignificance of life, the sheer pointlessness of so much of what makes up human existence.

"The Stoicism of the Meditations is fundamentally a defensive philosophy... For Marcus, life was a battle, and often it must have seemed — what in some sense it must always be — a losing battle."