Not What You Expected

Did you ever get what you always wanted just to be let down? Ecclesiastes wants to stress the limitations that pursuing good pleasures will give. Like many stories and fairy tales, characters can find out that life gives empty promises. Describing the characters from the musical La La Land, Kenneth Morefield states, “Some of the most bittersweet films depict hurting characters who pursue good things but, in attaining them, remain unfulfilled. Mia’s (Emma Stone) wistfulness at the end of La La Land is not meant to suggest she chose wrongly and that some alternate path would have led to an unreservedly happy life with Sebastian (Ryan Gosling). Only when we get everything we’ve ever wished for do we start to realize that having it doesn’t fulfill us like we assumed it would” (Kenneth Morefield, “13 Films That Capture the Themes of Ecclesiastes,” The Gospel Coalition, January 19, 2018,https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/13-films-that-capture-the-themes-of-ecclesiastes/).