- If It Makes You Happy ... - If It Makes You Happy ... It Could Be Very Bad - Who Knew Pleasure Would Be So Disappointing? - If It Feels Good, Do It? - What Does It Mean? Fill in the blank: My life would be meaningful if _________________. If you're observant, you'll see all kinds of ways people are trying to fill in that blank. Some want more money, more influence, more pleasure-MORE. So, does it work? Will devouring all that the world has to offer lead to satisfaction? The book of Ecclesiastes is about by someone who tried to answer that question. Whether it was sex, drugs, money, power, food, relationships, or knowledge, King Solomon tried it all and documented what he discovered as he searched for a purpose to his life. Look Around lets you gaze over Solomon's shoulder as he indulges every pleasure, exercises every power, and emerges with a radical conclusion about how to live. You'll find ways that his search for meaning connects with yours, and how your story can connect with your friends' as they seek meaning in the world.

Mark Matlock is president/founder of WisdomWorks Ministries

INTRODUCTION	6	(2)
CHAPTER 1: TOO MUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH	8	(12)
CHAPTER 2: THE HARD WAY	20	(14)
CHAPTER 3: WHAT SOLOMON HAD THAT YOU DON'T	34	(12)
CHAPTER 4: SOLOMON'S PARTY PALACE	46	(15)
CHAPTER 5: ROMANCE AND SEX	61	(17)
CHAPTER 6: I WANT MORE	78	(13)
CHAPTER 7: NOT GOOD ENOUGH	91	(20)
CHAPTER 8: THE BEST YOU CAN DO UNDER THE SUN	111	(16)
CHAPTER 9: TIME WILL TELL	127	(18)
CHAPTER 10: A LIFE THAT MATTERS	145	(16)
CHAPTER 11: WAHT ABOUT TODAY?	161

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Living a Life that Matters: Lessons from Solomon - the man who tried everything
Copyright © 2005 by Youth Specialties
Youth Specialties Products, 300 South Pierce Street, El Cajon, CA 92020, are
published by Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy
Bible: New International Version (North American Edition). Copyright © 1973,
1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Proofread by Anna Hammond and Heather Haggerty
Cover design by Burnkit
Interior design by SharpSeven Design
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 / DCI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TOO MUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH
What if you could have it all?
Money. Power. Love. Sex. Respect. Popularity.
Absolutely anything you want. Many of us spend
our lives wishing for that very scenario—or at least
imagining what it would be like. But not many of
us get there.
Mel Gibson got there.
Once an unknown Australian actor, Gibson got
his fi rst big break starring in the cult classic Mad Max
when he was twenty-three. More big roles followed
in blockbusters such as the Lethal Weapon series,
Maverick, Ransom, Conspiracy Theory, Payback,
What Women Want and Signs. As his international
stardom grew, so did his bank account. He is now
one of the top-paid actors in the world. For every
movie he stars in, he now gets $25 million.
But acting wasn’t enough for him. In 1993 he
stepped behind the camera to direct The Man Without
a Face. Two years later he earned two Academy
Awards for directing and producing Braveheart.
Gibson’s success didn’t stop with his career. He’s been married
to the same woman for 25 years, and they have seven kids
together. People magazine named him the Sexiest Man Alive.
Premiere magazine listed him as one of the most powerful people
in Hollywood.
Worldwide fame. Unlimited riches. True love. Fatherhood.
Widespread respect for his talent. International renown for his
sexual appeal. Virtually limitless power in his career. Rarely does
one man get so much in one lifetime.
Mel Gibson had it all. So he must have been the happiest
man on the planet, right? He had the power to do almost anything
he wanted. The money to buy almost anything he could
imagine. Almost nothing was out of reach for him.
Yet Gibson felt something was missing. All that he had wasn’t
enough for him. So he added some new experiences to the mix.
“I would get addicted to anything,” he admits. “Anything at all,
okay? Drugs, booze, anything. You name it. Coffee, cigarettes.
Sometimes I used to drive inebriated. I mean, this is the height of
careless stupidity. Done a lot of things I’m not proud of.”
Eventually Gibson sought treatment for his addictions. But
after getting clean and sober, he found himself right back where
he had started: with an emptiness in his life.
“I just didn’t want to go on.”
Th at’s what he told Diane Sawyer in an interview on ABC’s
Primetime Live. All of his personal success had brought him to a
place where the most appealing option to him was to jump out a
window and end it all.
“You know, I was looking down thinking, man, this is just
easier this way,” he said. “I don’t know, you have to be mad, you
have to be insane to despair in that way. But that is the height of
spiritual bankruptcy. There’s nothing left.”
NOTHING WORKS
If Mel Gibson had made that jump—if he’d killed himself at the
height of his success—he would have joined a list of well-known
people who “got it all” and then decided it wasn’t enough. One
of the best known is Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. He and his band
turned the music world upside down in the early 1990s with
what became known as grunge music. They enjoyed enormous
success with critics and music lovers alike. Despite that success,
Cobain refused to become a corporate icon and stayed true to his
“slacker” roots. And a generation of fans loved him for it.
Worldwide fame. Big money. Artistic respect. Influential
power. Love (Courtney that is). Integrity. Fatherhood. Drugs.
Alcohol. Sex. Kurt Cobain had it all. But all of it wasn’t enough
to help him overcome his lifelong battle with depression, addiction,
and chronic pain. In fact, some people who knew him said
having it all might have made things worse. Eventually, he just
couldn’t enjoy any of it.
A note he had written shortly before his apparent suicide
off ered some clues about the burden his success had become:
“I’ve tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do,
God, believe me I do, but it’s not enough)…. I need to be slightly
numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.”
Later he wrote, “I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember,
it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
Trent Reznor knows what it’s like to have it all, too. The worldfamous
front man for the band Nine Inch Nails is respected by
fans of industrial metal music for honestly expressing his rage and
despair at life’s injustice and emptiness. Reznor’s lyrics describe
his sometimes shocking, usually depressing, views on everything
from relationships to sex to religion to love.
Worldwide fame. Big money. Love from black-clad fans and
music critics. Power. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Reznor has almost everything
anyone could possibly want out of life. And here’s what
he said about it: “It didn’t make sense…nothing brought me joy.
After I got everything I ever wanted, I was ****ing worse off than
I was before.”
Something’s not adding up here, is it?
If getting everything life has to offer doesn’t bring happiness
or peace or joy, what’s the point of living? That’s the question Mel
Gibson, Kurt Cobain, and Trent Reznor—as well as countless
other rich and successful people—came face to face with. Those
guys got to a place most of us never will. They made their fantasies
reality. They indulged in everything life has to off er—alcohol,
drugs, sex, art. You name it, they tried it.
And what conclusion did they reach? Nothing satisfies. Not
in the long run, at least. Not in a way that matters.
They weren’t the fi rst guys to reach that depressing conclusion.
In fact the viewpoint is as ancient as the Old Testament. A

Excerpted from Living a Life That Matters: Lessons from Solomon the Man Who Tried Everything by Mark Matlock
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