The document is an excerpt from the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. It discusses the meaninglessness and repetitiveness of life, where generations come and go but "there is nothing new under the sun." Everything humans labor for seems futile. The text questions if there is anything truly new and concludes that what was done in the past will be done again and people will not be remembered by future generations.

1. tlhq

2. The words of the Teacher, son of
David, king in Jerusalem:
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3. What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

4. The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

5. All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

6. Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

7. tlhq

8. “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

10. tlhq

11. Rollo May:
The experience of emptiness, rather,
generally comes from people’s feeling
that they are powerless to do anything
effective about their lives or the world
they live in.

12. When Adam and Eve did eat of the
fruit of the first tree, “their eyes were
opened”; and the first evidence of their
knowing good and evil was in their
experiencing anxiety and guilt. They
were “aware of their nakedness,”…

14. tlhq

15. Joseph Krutch:
The faculty of wonder tires easily.
Life would seem a great deal fuller
than it does if it were not for the fact
that the human being is, by nature, a
creature to whom “O altitudeo!’ is
much less natural than ‘so what!’

17. To be patient toward all that is unsolved
in your heart and to try to love the
questions themselves like locked rooms
and like books that are written in a very
foreign tongue. Do not seek the
answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live
them. And the point is, to live
everything. Live the questions now.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

18. tlhq