ourselves within that world. The single question that animates him is this: If we won’t live forever, or even long enough to make a lasting difference to the world, how then should we live? It takes the whole of Ecclesiastes to answer that question, and I want to unpack it in the successive chapters of this book. The argument is cumulative, and we need to allow the Preacher to make his case bit by bit, like an artist painting on a canvas. At the outset, 1:1–11 sketches a very basic point: accepting