All is vanity

"...All is vanity....
All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.
All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.  What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted."
Ecclesiastes 1:2,7,8,14,15 (New American Standard Version)

Ecclesiastes has always been one of my favorite books.

"Isn't it rather cynical?" one may ask.

Yes and no.

Solomon was an architect, real estate developer, rancher, farmer, international businessman, best-selling author, lover-extraordinaire and king.  There was no human goal that this man had not achieved in his lifetime. He found love, fame, fortune, fulfillment. His summary of life in Ecclesiastes is not coming from an embittered man who was never able to "grab the brass ring" on the merry-go-round of life.  Solomon had a collection of brass rings, and he discovered that they all turned his fingers green when he wore them!  They were worthless once they joined his collection of rings.

Why? To put it bluntly in middle-aged terms: because we're all going to die. (I can say this, I just had my 53rd birthday this month.)

All that striving, saving, economizing, sacrificing, fighting and dreaming earns us a spot--in the graveyard!  It all dies with us.  And all our effort and sacrifice and creativity and struggle are almost immediately forgotten by the next generation, who remains here on earth to learn all the same lessons that we took with us to the grave.

Do I sound like a "downer"?

Let's talk more tomorrow about how Solomon has helped me deal with my middle-aged musings. For now, I've gotta go. I have places to go, things to do, brass rings to reach for...

Until tomorrow, this is Mama O., with another post.