When Success Feels Empty — Ecclesiastes

The Preacher names an evil he has seen, and says it is common among people. A man is given riches, wealth and honour, so that he lacks nothing his soul desires. Yet God does not give him the power to enjoy any of it, and a stranger eats it instead. He calls this vanity and an evil disease.

Then he pushes the case as far as it will go. Suppose a man has a hundred children and lives many years, but his soul is not filled with good and he is not even buried. An untimely birth, the Preacher says, is better than that man. The child comes in with vanity and goes out in darkness, and its name is covered in darkness. It has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it has more rest than the man. Even if he lived a thousand years twice over and saw no good, do not all go to one place?

All the labour of man is for his mouth, he says, and still the appetite is not filled. What more does the wise man have than the fool, or the poor man who knows how to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire. What has been is already named, and it is known that it is man, who cannot argue with one mightier than himself. Many things increase vanity, so what is a person the better for them?

The chapter ends with two questions and no answer. Who knows what is good for a person in this life, in all the days of his vain life, which he spends like a shadow? And who can tell him what will come after him under the sun?