Marcus Aurelius has long been noted as an unconventional philosopher, a fact evident right from the opening of his Meditations. Rather than opening with a discussion of his own philosophy, he chooses to recount the innumerable lessons bequeathed him by friends and forebears, concluding with a general thanks to the gods (though nature might be a more accurate term here) for his good fortune in having been given these opportunities.

From Book 1, passage XIV. (Casaubon translation):

From the gods I received that I had good grandfathers, and parents, a good sister, good masters, good domestics, loving kinsmen, almost all that I have; and that I never through haste and rashness transgressed against any of them, notwithstanding that my disposition was such, as that such a thing (if occasion had been) might very well have been committed by me, but that It was the mercy of the gods, to prevent such a concurring of matters and occasions, as might make me to incur this blame.

…

All these things without the assistance of the gods, and fortune, could not have been.

Wherever Marcus speaks of Stoic wisdom and endurance, he never forgets that it is by providence that he had within him the strength and wisdom, cultivated by good education, to embody such virtues; just as it is by providence that we have access to the teachings of Marcus. So let us thank him quite as much as he thanks his own teachers.