Which Concerns Unhappiness


I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove thee with mirth, and thou shalt enjoy good: and behold, this also was vanity.--Eccles. 2: 1.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the world is full of disappointed and unhappy people. Why is this so? Why do the objects and pursuits of life to which so many people devote themselves turn out to be disappointing, leaving them discontented and unhappy?

The answer is disclosed in the confession of the sated Solomon: “I made me great works: I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks; I made me pools of water; I got me servants and maidens; I gathered me silver and gold; I got me men singers and women singers. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun” (Eccles. 2: 4-11).

Too much me in all this. No thought of anybody but me, me, me. Eight times in this brief paragraph he uses that personal pronoun. I made me this and made me that. I got me this and got me that.

This tells why so many people are unhappy. There is too much me in all that they labor to do. Their striving after happiness is like striving after wind--they can never catch up with it, never lay hold upon it.

People make themselves unhappy by making happiness the chief end of life. In whatever direction they turn, their object is to gain something which they think will add to their pleasure and enjoyment of life.

If Solomon, with his ingenuity and vast resources, could not reach a better end by pursuing worldly objects and luxurious indulgence, what can anyone of less degree hope to gain by pursuing a course of selfishness and perpetually seeking earthly pleasures and temporal delights? It is a selfish and mean view of life which makes it a pursuit of pleasure, and nothing in God’s universe is more surely doomed to defeat and disappointment.

No one can be happy who lives only for himself. The self-centered life can never be a happy life. Self-indulgence is the joy-killer of human life. Self-denial and doing good to others--therein is the secret of happiness.