Do not be surprised if Ecclesiastes gets frustrating.
That being said, we have an important passage today about the meaning (and apparent meaninglessness) of pleasure and enjoyment. It would be far too easy to label this passage as Solomon's frat boy party days where he spent all of him time in drunken debauchery. And he probably tried some of that. But he also did really productive things like building gardens and built houses and amassed wealth, which are many of the things that we spend our time doing. And he gives this a shot for quite some time, as gardens do not come up in a day.
And he had fun doing it, the reward of his work was in the joy that he found in doing it. Yet there was something nagging him when he finished all of his work. Was there meaning found in the work itself? It doesn't seem so. What it seems to say is that Solomon sees his work as fleeting. Part of that is the nature of the work- very self-serving (I built x, y and z for myself). Another element of Ecclesiastes' restlessness is the searching. And we will continue to explore this searching throughout the entire book. We are all searching for "meaning" in some way, and we spend our lives engaged in the search. Some parts of the search will be enjoyable, others will not. But we can't get so caught up in the destination that we refuse to remember/hold onto the the search itself. So as we all stumble toward God, I pray that we will treasure the journey God brings us on and embrace the mysteries of that journey.
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