What Do I Want to Do with My Life?
One of the most soul-searching questions a person can ask oneself is, “What do I want to do with my life?”
Break that question into a more manageable size and we have, “What do I want to do next?”
“What’s next?” is a question that has seven billion possible answers, one for each human being living.
To a person without a job, one’s answer may be, “finding a job.”
To a person looking for a mate, one’s answer may be, “a wife” or “a husband.”
To a person trying hard to climb the corporate ladder, one’s answer may be, “a project manager,” or “a V.P.”
To a childless couple, their answer may be, “a baby.”
To the President, his answer may be, “how to reduce the deficit without raising taxes.”
Whatever your answer, you may be interested to know the answer of one person who had everything.
This man had more money than he could count, more women than he could name, more power than he could use and more wine than he could drink. From the academic ivory tower to the cut-throat marketplace of Wall Street, from the sex and drug scene of Polk Street of San Francisco to the blackjack tables of Las Vegas, this man had tried them all.
More, this man was an industrialist, architect, researcher, author and poet.
He had brains, power, honor, wealth and prestige, He could make the rich and famous look like the poor and obscure.
He is one of those men who can honestly tell you, “You name it, I’ve tried it.”
This man is none other than King Solomon.
In Ecclesiastes, he himself confessed, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.”1 He would have made Hugh Hefner look like a saint.
The projects he undertook2 and they way he tried to corner the silver and gold market3 would have made Donald Trump and the Hunt Brothers look like operators of small business.
In all his quest for personal fulfillment, Solomon came to this conclusions:
“When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”4
Solomon’s advice to you and me today is the same as the one he has given more than three thousand years ago to everyone who would listen: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”5
Footnotes:
1 Ecclesiastes 2:10a
2 2:4-7
3 2:8a
4 2:11
5 12:13b