I listened a Jewish-focused podcast recently that essentially was about how Ecclesiastes was exhorting us to recognize that the time of (A/B testing: Reaping and sowing, embracing or not) was all taking place at the same, present moment. That every moment is the time for both - moments are finite but the human experience is not. That wasn't what I was thinking of when I wrote that comment about my own personal disenchantment and my need to soldier on, making things that are dust, but it's funny you mentioned it.

I've personally struggled over and over with the question of whether I'm making code or music or art for some kind of quickly-fading recognition or to prove something to myself, or just to have something to do. I see pros and cons both ways. And I wonder whether there even is such a thing as leaving a lasting mark in this world. And whether it's better to leave no mark at all, than to leave any kind of stain. An imprint in a clay tablet that lasts 5000 years certainly is a mark. But then you risk being reduced to an archaelogical specimen.

We can still unscramble some cuneiform, but we can't decipher the personal motives of the writers, and I wish we could. I'm concerned with what it means to be a good human and a successful one at the same time, but, I'm a drop in the ocean.

I think the point of these philosophies is not really to make you a morally upright person so much as to show you that you're a grain of sand, and let you draw your own conclusions.