Being wise also seemed useless

12 Then I started to think about being wise, and also about being foolish [DOU].

I said to myself, “I certainly do not think that [RHQ] the next king will be able to do anything better than I can.”

13 And I thought, “Surely it is better to be wise than to be foolish,

like light is better than darkness,

14 because wise people walk in the daylight and [IDM] can see where they are going,

but foolish people walk in the darkness and cannot see where they are going.”

But I also realized that both wise people and foolish people eventually die.

15 So I said to myself,

“I am very wise, but I will die at the end of my life, like foolish people do.

So ◄how has it benefited me to be very wise?/it certainly has not benefited me to be very wise [RHQ]►.

I do not understand why people consider that it is valuable to be wise.

16 Wise people and foolish people all die.

And after we die, we will all eventually be forgotten [DOU].”

17 So I hated being alive, because everything that we do here on the earth [MTY] distresses me. It all seems to be useless like chasing the wind.