Vanity upon vanity all is vanity is a refrain often thrown around when tragedy strikes and someone in their prime is cruelly and suddenly yanked out by the cold and unforgiving hand of death.
The phrase which in its original text reads “vanities of vanities, all is vanity. According to Dr Oliver Teare who wrote an insightful article about the phrase, in its original Hebrew translation is the most appropriate translation should read Vapor of vapor- all is vapor and can be found in (.https://interestingliterature.com/2021/07/bible-vanity-of-vanities-all-is-vanity-meaning-analysis/). It connotes the futility of our transient existence. Here today, gone tomorrow. It speaks to the futility of our insatiable quest for material things instead of seeking after wisdom.
It does not mean that our existence in life is meaningless.
What is meaningless, futile, banal and transient is our inordinate quest for the “good” things of life which in our material world often means the comfort of extravagant materialism, of women, fame, and power.
King Solomon who is thought to be the author of Ecclesiastices and reputed to be the wealthiest human to ever walk the surface of earth, was tying to convey to his readers the futility, the emptiness and the dissatisfaction of all his stupendous material possession, his mansion of gold, his countless wives and concubines. Death has the last say on them all. Hence vanity of vanities- all Is vanity.
According to Dr. Teare, Ecclesiastes is one of the more accessible books of the Bible: its message has remained the same as when it was written more than two millennia ago. The Existentialists of the twentieth century were merely rediscovering what those who’d gone before had already realised: that life doesn’t appear to come with any in-built meaning.
According to Dr: Teare, we have to create some kind of meaning and purpose for ourselves. After all, the earth has been here long before us, and will endure long after we have gone.
So life doesn’t have to be purposelesss. Our life indeed can and should have a purpose and meaning. It all depends on what we prioritize its purpose to be. It is hard to argue that the life of Nelson Mandela, or Ghandi or Dr. Martin Luther King was futile amd without purpose.
For centuries in the future historians will probably still be studying and writing about their sojourn and larger than life impact on this planet. Historians will not be recording how much wealth they accumulated but about their impact on the world.
Our life begins with a dot at birth and ends with a dot at our exit. What counts is what we fill the dash between the two dots with.
Being born at all is beating the biggest odd or winning the the most improbably jackpot ever. The probability of being born at all is so slim it is the greatest miracle giving all that have to line up perfectly for us to even be born, starting with the chance probability of our parents meeting and the odd of our DNA being the one that survived the race of life at conception.
The only certainty in life is death everything else is a chance, hence we hold the universe a duty to make this greatest gift , the gift of life, our very existence, count, knowing full well that death can come knocking at any time unannounced.
We have a duty to sow goodness into this messed up cruel world because thaf is all that will count when our sojourn on this planet comes to an inevitable, and inescapable end.
We all hold on by faith that there must be a higher purpose and existence beyond this banal existence of ours. It is all based on faith, which is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The only thing we know for sure experientially is this life of ours.
So Wigiwe’s existence and sojourn on this side of the divide, despite his sudden untimely ending was not in vain. He left an impact in this world which people will debate for years to come.
What matter is not how we die but how we live.
