August 25th, 2020
I’ve just finished reading the Book of Ecclesiastes and I wanted to compile my thoughts. I think the lessons presented in the Book of Ecclesiastes are lessons that I have learned through experience or study. The main lessons are time moves ever forward and death comes to us all. For a long time in college, I had my eyes set on getting an engineering job where I could make a lot of money, however, I didn’t really have a specific job in mind. My thinking was that I could do just about any engineering job and if I could do any engineering job, I wanted to do an engineering job that made the most money. It became apparent once I graduated with my bachelor’s, that most of the people who were getting high paying jobs were those who were actually interested in jobs and companies. I had a moment after I graduated where I said “Man, I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and I have no idea what I want to do”. Fortunately, I had lined up grad school before I graduated which allowed me to spend the next two years reflecting on what I really wanted to do. It was very stressful mostly because I had a bit of a life-altering moment that made me question a lot of things and really lit a fire under my butt to encourage me to figure things out. My conclusion was that I would be a good project manager and so I began tailoring my resume and honing my skills to emphasize that, however, that didn’t really give much guidance as to the type of career/company I would want to join. This certainly showed in my interviews once I was close to finishing. The main thing that I realized was that it didn’t matter what type of engineering I was doing, but I wanted to make sure I was working with the right people. That only seemed to resonate with one company and they ended up being the only company that offered me a position and that’s the company I’m working at now. I did learn however that they offered the position to one of my colleagues who turned it down before they asked me which was a little saddening. He was certainly a better engineer skill-wise, but I felt I was able to see the big picture much more clearly and had more of a business mindset. This goes back to the fact that there wasn’t a particular engineering field that I was most interested in which is not something that most companies want to see. I’m still not super interested in all the technical aspects of engineering preferring instead to study history and philosophy. I somehow didn’t recognize that those who were going into those lucrative careers had been preparing for them for most of their academic career. I was preparing for something generic and amorphous it would seem. I felt the salary offered by my current employer was lower than what I expected; I asked for more and was given a higher bonus, but I still felt a little disappointed. I realized that if I had been more focused growing up and throughout college, it wouldn’t have taken me five years to graduate and I probably wouldn’t have done the master’s degree right after (at present I have seen no monetary benefit to doing the masters). I even considered doing a Ph.D. after the masters (something I wouldn’t even fathom doing once I started college let alone the masters), but at this point, the economics don’t make sense. I’ve often thought that if I could transfer my consciousness back in time to high school or middle school with all of the knowledge and experiences I gained thus far, I would think I would be able to achieve so much more in life. This seems to parallel somewhat what is discussed in the Book of Ecclesiastes of the idea that life is hevel (translated to meaningless or more accurately smoke). During my master’s program I started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and one of the habits stuck out to me: Habit 2 – begin with the end in mind. I believe it was the chapter on this habit that said to “imagine you are on your death bed” and to “think about what legacy you want to leave behind”. This would help you to guide your actions so that when the end of your life comes, you can look back and be proud of what you accomplished. This seems to be a nice solution to the philosophical conundrums of Ecclesiastes. This would be worth exploring in more detail along with Proverbs and Job within a framework of other works such as 7 Habits. Another book that is on my list that may be of relevance is Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even if The Universe Doesn’t by Ralph Lewis which discusses the question “Can there be purpose without God?”. This would seem to provide some perspective on the question that I have “What if God Doesn’t Exist?”. A couple of other books that I have that may be worth exploring when the time comes to revisit this would be The Fundamentals of Ethics and The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems by Russ Shafer-Landau as one of the first topics discussed is the hedonism, which is a school of thought that argues seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering are the only components of well-being. These readings would provide a good perspective on the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. It would also be interesting to learn more about eastern philosophy as I’m sure there are some parallels there. In conclusion, the wisdom literature in the Old Testament (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job) seem to hold a wealth of knowledge that is applicable to everyday life and would be worth diving into further and coupling that with the western and eastern philosophy to draw some more profound conclusions. I look forward to that time, but alas I must press onwards with the Song of Songs.