Ecclesiastes Helps Us Find Happiness in Different Seasons of Life

Memento Mori

Remembering the seasonality of life can really help us enjoy God’s world. When everything feels low, dark, and gloomy, it is naturally comforting to remember that there is a time for everything and that like all seasons, this too shall pass (which presumably explains why so many people have that phrase beautifully calligraphed on their bodies or in their hallways). But the reverse is true too. Seasons of sunshine, sweetness, and light will also fade in due time, so it is important not to take them for granted but to enjoy them and actively celebrate them while they are here—as forty-somethings are forever telling twenty-somethings, as parents of twenty-eight-year-olds are forever telling parents of eight-year-olds, and as poets are forever telling everybody.¹ In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Christopher Wright calls it “Christian opportunism.”² The writer of Ecclesiastes, Qoholet, (which means “the Collector” or perhaps “the Preacher” (Ecc. 1:2)) makes the obvious application: “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (Eccl. 7:14).

He also makes two applications that are less obvious. One is that we should spend more time thinking about death, not less.

The day of death [is better] than the day of birth.
      It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting. (Eccl. 7:1–2)

Partly, Qoholet explains, that is because of the perspective we get when we consider our own mortality:

This is the end of all mankind,
      and the living will lay it to heart. (Eccl. 7:2)

The imminence of death focuses the mind on the things that really matter: what David Brooks calls “eulogy virtues” (like love, kindness, and generosity) as opposed to “resumé virtues” (like productivity, competence, and efficiency).³ But partly it is because there is a kind of joy that we can only know if we have been through sorrow, just as there is a kind of feasting we can only experience if we have been fasting. Shakespeare put it like this:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.⁴

Qoholeth’s version is even more on the nose:

Sorrow is better than laughter,
      for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. (Eccl. 7:3)

Texts like this eventually gave rise to the tradition of the memento mori (“Remember that you die”) in Christian music, literature, and art—of which Philippe de Champaigne’s painting is my favorite. It simply depicts life, death, and time; in true Qoholet style this genre of painting was known as vanitas.

Shifting Priorities in Different Seasons of Life

The other application we can make to the questions of happiness and time, Qoholet says, relates to our seasons of life. This is something that becomes clearer the older we get. When we are young, we have little awareness of how distinctive and unusual our life stage is because it is all we have known. But as we age, the differences between the seasons come into sharper focus. We have less energy than we used to but more wisdom. We derive more of our happiness from looking back than from looking forward. We may do fewer different things in our day, but we notice that they have more impact. Our brains become worse at learning but better at synthesizing. As Arthur Brooks points out, this transition from “fluid intelligence” to “crystallized intelligence” has (or should have) significant implications for the things we give our time to.⁵

Our shifting priorities affect our happiness in some intriguing ways. The sociologist Jean Twenge has done a huge amount of research on the differences between the generations and found that Millennials (born 1980–1994) were happier than previous generations when they were teenagers but are less happy now as adults. One explanation for this, she suggests, is that our priorities change as we age with the result that things that make us happier in our teens and early twenties (like liberation from family, from religion, and from community) make us sadder in our late twenties and thirties:

In the individualistic culture Millennials have known all of their lives, individual freedom is valued over the tight social bonds of institutions like marriage and religion. Although individualism has many upsides, its risks include isolation and loneliness and their bedfellows unhappiness and depression. The lone self is a weak foundation for robust mental health; humans need social relationships to be happy and fulfilled in life. That is especially true as young people age past adulthood. This might be why Millennials were happier as teens but not as adults—individualism and freedom feel good when you are young but empty when you are older.⁶

Similarly, the advantages and challenges that each life stage presents to us are constantly evolving. In my twenties I had health and time but no money; now in my forties, I have health and money but precious little time; and if I reach my seventies, the chances are that I will finally have both time and money but probably less health. As we change, the questions we wrestle with change too. In our twenties, we ask, “Who am I?” In our thirties we ask, “How do I balance all this?” In our forties the question becomes “Is this it?”—which then turns into “Can I keep going?” in our fifties and “Am I obsolete?” in our sixties. By our seventies and eighties, we are asking, “Was it worth it?”⁷

Enjoy Life in the Season You’re In

Qoholet has plenty of wisdom for us here. Whatever season of life we are in, we are summoned to rejoice in the ordinary gifts of being alive: “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love. . . . Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Eccl. 9:7–10). We are also urged not to fall into the trap that besets old and young alike, namely trying to get rich: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them, and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes?” (Eccl. 5:10–11).⁸

But Qoholet has age-specific advice for us as well. Older people should rejoice in their old age and experience, and younger people should rejoice in their youth and vitality. “So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. . . . Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth” (Eccl. 11:8–9).

Whatever season of life we are in, we are summoned to rejoice in the ordinary gifts of being alive.

The obstacles to joy will look different in each case. Older people risk becoming cantankerous and nostalgic about the past:

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
      for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
      For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. (Eccl. 7:9–10)

So instead, older people should reflect on this:

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
      and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
            (Eccl. 7:8)

The joy of younger people, on the other hand, is more likely to be threatened by anxiety about the future. “Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity” (Eccl. 11:10). This then leads into one of the most beautiful paragraphs ever written in any language:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low—they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets—before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Eccl. 12:1–7)

Life is seasonal, and each season is intended to be lived differently. I have heard it described as a journey from winter (ages 0–20) into spring (20–40), then summer (40–60), autumn (60–80) and winter (80+), followed by the eternal spring of the resurrection. Spring is full of color and life; but it is often messy, unpredictable, and chaotic. Autumn sees the leaves fall as everything cools; but it is also the time of maturity and fruit, from which the life of the next generation comes.

This is not merely a metaphor. It is the way God has made the world. And this has crucial implications for our happiness over time, in that the very things that make springtime so exhausting—completing our education, setting up home, learning how to do everything for the first time, starting a career, taking on leadership, giving sacrificially, raising and training young children, and so on—are the things that make autumn so rewarding. (Put negatively, a person who does none of these things will be less tired in spring but much less fruitful in autumn.) Our twenties and thirties are supposed to be hard work, because we are sowing the crops that will sustain and delight us in our sixties and seventies.

It is good for a man that he bear
      the yoke in his youth. (Lam. 3:27)

By the same token, it is by design that our achievements are eventually eclipsed by those younger than us, as we find our happiness less in extrinsic things outside of ourselves (qualifications, possessions, successes, recognition) and more in intrinsic ones (fulfillment, relationships, satisfaction, love).⁹ We are meant to turn the page as we age, allowing others to take center stage as we move from learner to earner to sage.

This article is adapted from Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever by Andrew Wilson.

Related Articles