Ecclesiastes 2:12-16

New Century Version

Maybe Wisdom Is the Answer

¹²Then I began to think again about being wise,
    and also about being foolish and doing crazy things.
But after all, what more can anyone do?
    He can’t do more than what the other king has already done.
¹³I saw that being wise is certainly better than being foolish,
    just as light is better than darkness.
¹⁴Wise people see where they are going,
    but fools walk around in the dark.
Yet I saw that
    both wise and foolish people end the same way.

¹⁵I thought to myself,
“What happens to a fool will happen to me, too,
    so what is the reward for being wise?”
I said to myself,
    “Being wise is also useless.”
¹⁶The wise person and the fool
    will both die,
and no one will remember either one for long.
    In the future, both will be forgotten.