These things are desired not just for their own sake but for their presumed power to make us happy. They are part of what we are calling the narrative of happiness. But they are not happiness itself. We can find pleasure in them, to be sure, but not contentment; certainly not the peace we are seeking.
A guy sets out to put an addition on his house because he thinks his family needs more space and he wants to enhance the value of his property. He works hard on it, either building it himself or paying for it to be built. It seems good to him, desirable; otherwise he would not sacrifice so much.
But the addition cannot make him happy. If he built it himself, and it came out well, he can take a craftsman’s pleasure in it, but even this is limited. The craftsman’s highest pleasure is in crafting, which is linked to identity; he cannot enjoy the thing he made as much as the thing he is making.
He discovers that pleasure is not happiness. It is quite possible to find pleasure in the work his hands have done and still feel miserable and restless inside. And the pleasure he can receive from his work fades over the years with inevitable decay. His addition becomes subtraction.
Perhaps he feels compelled to continue to pursue the mirage of happiness with something new. But this new thing—even if it is the greatest addition in the world—will not make him happy either. It will not give him what he desires most, as Solomon found out.
The reason is identity, which is at the root of the pursuit of happiness in all its forms. There are many things we love, but what we love the most is our identity (generally speaking). This love is the hidden spring of all the ambitious things we might do in pursuit of some presumed good.
Either we are living for pleasure—as some claim to do—and they are not happy either—or we are trying to build something, do something, make something, achieve something. All of that doing is nothing more than the surface of something that remains unseen but is real just the same.
“All people are like the grass.” Their lives are a momentary flowering in the vast continuum of time. This is the very thing that drives them to succeed. They want to do something and become someone before departing from this spinning orb, and a nagging little voice keeps driving them on.
But the same voice that drives them on will also never let them be content. Why did Beethoven write nine symphonies? Wasn’t the Eroica enough, that astonishing masterpiece? No, it most certainly was not enough; not if you’re Beethoven. It can never be enough.
Solomon is not a moralist. In fact the amazing thing about Ecclesiastes is it has no moral. Perhaps this is why it can seem unsettling to Christians. We want a moral because it implies closure. Incidentally, it also intimates winners and losers, and is therefore linked to identity.
Don’t bother looking for closure in this great book, however. It is certainly not immoral—far from it—but neither does it satisfy our desire to have things wrapped up in a neat little package. It is the raw data of existence as seen through the eyes of a man who is too old to dissemble.
We used to call literature of this type a “complaint.” It was not unique to Solomon. Here is his father: “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then I spoke with my tongue, Lord, make me to know my end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am.”
Solomon looks back on his youth and his successes and realizes that “all is vanity.” He spent his life chasing after happiness only to discover in old age that he had not found it; that it was like chasing after wind. And then there was only one thing left for him, only one thing of which he was certain.
But that is the end of the story . . .
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity
When we are young, we might be inclined to read these words as a blistering critique of society and manners, like Thackeray’s famous book. But that is not what they are at all. They are an outburst from an old man who has grown tired of life—and mostly of himself.
Solomon had suddenly become aware of his mortality. We’ll get into this in more depth later on. Now of course we do know we are mortal, even from a young age. But in old age it ceases to be just head knowledge and becomes personal—in fact every time we look in the mirror.
This momentous shift in our point of view changes everything. Once you’ve seen your mortality, you cannot go back. You can’t become young and careless again. You are stuck where you are. And the place where Solomon was stuck was not good.
Before going on, let us take a moment to praise happy old men. We see them all the time in movies and on TV and at the country club. We have no intention of questioning their happiness. In fact we are very glad for them—if they are happy.
But that was not what Solomon was. He was more like the rest of us. The unhappiness we experience as young men and women starts to become a little desperate as it spills over into old age, because we begin to realize that it is unlikely to go away.
We live our whole lives dreaming of the time when we will grow old and wise and retire and be happy. We live in hope of enjoying our “golden years.” But what happens to hope when that time comes and we still are not happy? What happens when old age seems more like a trap than a release?
When we are young, we think of gray hair as a sign of contentment and being reconciled to the world. But to the person who actually has gray hair, it is a sign of old age, decline, and benign neglect. It is a sign that time is growing short, which makes unhappiness seem more pronounced.
Solomon has seen all this, and his reaction is a bitter outburst. “All is vanity.” He does not mean there is nothing of value in God’s creation. He does not mean there is no value in mortals or their work. He means he is still unhappy after all these years, and therefore all of his striving was in vain.
What does a man gain by all the toil with which he toils under the sun?
Staring death in the face, Solomon now realizes that it does not matter how much you build or how much you achieve or accumulate. You have to leave all that behind at the door to the grave.
He appears not to have been thinking about this until now. He wrote a glorious book that was all about obtaining prosperity and contentment through wisdom (Proverbs). What changed? He did. His perspective changed as he grew old and his youthful energy ebbed away.
There is one thing no one can gain by his toil, which is life. We can accumulate stuff and honors, but we cannot be happy with them because they cannot save us from the grave. And this suggests that life—not stuff or honors—is the thing we really want the most.
So why do we chase after the stuff and honors? Because unconsciously we think they will give us life. Our desire for life is the hidden force in all ambition and striving, hidden even from ourselves. But in old age, this desire is unveiled, and then we see the futility of our toil.
This is the analysis of our continuing unhappiness put forth by Ecclesiastes. You can decide for yourself whether it fits the facts. If so, then you may find some interesting information about contentment in this bracing old book.
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
A great irreducible truth has been revealed to Solomon in his old age—or through old age—and will not let him go. Any thought of the importance and uniqueness of our toil is lost when we realize that generations come and generations go.
It is hard to say exactly when this happens. Maybe it’s the first time you find yourself being extra careful on the stairs or stymied by blurred words on the page. Maybe it’s when the hearing starts to go. Maybe it’s when you realize that the people in the nursing home are not that much older than you.
But it does happen, except in the oblivious. At some point it will become evident to all that