The story is told of a wealthy merchant named Darius. Having inherited great riches, he determined to enjoy everything life could offer. He built gardens with flowing fountains, hosted feasts with endless wine, surrounded himself with music, laughter, and beautiful companions. He traveled to distant lands, collected art, and filled his house with gold. For a time, he delighted in it all. Yet as the years passed, he noticed that every pleasure dulled. The wine no longer thrilled, the gardens no longer astonished, the music became background noise. One evening, looking out over his vast estate, he sighed: I denied myself nothing, and yet I feel empty.
“I said to myself, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.’ But that also proved to be meaningless.
‘Laughter,’ I said, ‘is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?’
I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly, my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.
I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees.
I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me.
I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well, the delights of a man’s heart.
I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet 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.”
(Ecclesiastes 2:1–11, NIV)
The Teacher spares us no detail: pleasure pursued in every form, wine, laughter, projects, possessions, sex, fame, yet in the end, futility. Augustine anticipated this when he confessed that every created delight, no matter how good, failed to satisfy the restless human heart. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You,” he wrote. Aquinas systematized the same: every finite good, even the greatest, is desired as a step toward happiness, but only God as the final end can fulfill the will completely. Without the final end, pleasures cannot secure happiness; they collapse into weariness.
Philosophy outside the Christian tradition also noted this. Aristotle distinguished between hedone (pleasure) and eudaimonia (flourishing). Pleasure could accompany flourishing, but it was not its essence. To live only for pleasure was to live like cattle, he said. Pascal, centuries later, sharpened the point with his reflections on diversion. Human beings, he wrote, fill their lives with entertainment and distractions, not because these bring real joy, but because they prevent us from thinking about death and the emptiness within. Laughter, as Qoheleth says, is madness, not because it is bad, but because it hides the deeper truth.
In our own age, we are surrounded by industries built on the promise of pleasure. Herbert Marcuse, in One-Dimensional Man, argued that modern consumer societies channel human desire into endless consumption. We are promised happiness through products, but the promise is structured so that satisfaction never lasts: we must always buy again, upgrade again, desire again. Zygmunt Bauman, describing our “liquid modernity,” noted that identities are formed through consumption but dissolve as quickly as they are formed. The Teacher’s words echo with new urgency in a world of streaming platforms, luxury branding, and curated lifestyles: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired.” Yet the result remains: “everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
The paradox is not that pleasure is bad. Scripture elsewhere calls wine a gift, laughter a blessing, gardens a delight. The Teacher does not despise joy but unmasks its limits. Pleasure pursued as ultimate collapses. Augustine would say: the heart that tries to rest in finite delights alone will find them too small. Aquinas would add: they are real goods, but partial and provisional. Aristotle would remind us: they must be integrated into a life aimed at virtue, not pursued as ends. Pascal would caution: diversion anesthetizes but does not heal. Marcuse and Bauman would warn: consumer society exploits this longing, feeding it endlessly but never fulfilling it.
What, then, is the counsel? It is not ascetic hatred of pleasure. Darius’s mistake was not enjoying his gardens but expecting them to silence the ache of mortality. The Teacher’s point is that pleasure cannot bear the weight of ultimate meaning. It is vapor, a good gift but not a solid foundation. The joy of a meal, the thrill of music, the sweetness of intimacy, these are genuine, but fleeting. To make them the center is to grasp smoke.
The didactic lesson is sharp: test your pleasures. Ask what you are demanding of them. Do you expect them to deliver eternity? If so, you will be disappointed. Do you enjoy them as gifts within a life oriented to something greater? Then they can be received with gratitude without collapsing under impossible expectations. Augustine would tell us that every delight is a signpost pointing to God. Aquinas would urge us to order pleasures toward the highest good. Pascal would warn us not to drown our questions in diversion. Even Nietzsche, no friend of asceticism, would remind us that the test of life is whether we can affirm it honestly, not whether we can avoid despair through distractions.
Darius, surveying his estate, found futility not because his gardens were ugly or his wine sour but because he demanded from them what they could never give. So too with us: the entertainment, the travel, the possessions, the curated experiences. They sparkle for a season, then fade. Qoheleth strips away the illusion with blunt clarity: pleasure is not enough. It never was.
To know this is not to despise joy but to reframe it. Wine is good, but it is not God. Laughter is healing, but it is not eternal. The pursuit of pleasure alone ends in grief, but pleasure received rightly can be part of a life that points beyond itself. The Teacher’s voice still speaks across the centuries, whispering into our restless consumption: do not clutch at smoke. Learn instead to hold joy lightly, gratefully, without illusion. Only then can it be what it was always meant to be: not an answer, but a gift.