Is Kohelet All That Negative?

Every week I go to write my blog post: I often find that I'm writing depressing post after depressing post.. It just doesn't ever seem to be positive with Kohelet. It's almost exhausted.

Well, tonight I fell asleep and when I kept waking up and trying to force myself to write my blog post I really just couldn't get myself to do it. So I started thinking: what if I could make it a little bit more exciting? A little bit more positive so that I wasn't so depressed while writing my blog post! 

I'm gonna give this whole positivity thing a shot (even though I usually identify with Kohelet's negativity) so bear with me! 

Just like all humans "תחת השמש " we all go through hard times. We all make mistakes. We all get really down and negative and wish we just really would have never had the opportunity to mess up. However, despite these moments of anger, we wouldn't define ourselves or life by these moments. 

Is this really what Kohelet is doing? As we already discussed the different perspectives (the נהנה, the עמל, and the יראי אלוקים) are all really קהלת - just different aspects of his personality. Maybe these are the different phases he went through -- the moments of frustration that he had. 

I'm going to venture to say that קהלת doesn't really think ''הכל הבל.'' I think that he's showing each of us a side within us all and taking it to an extreme to show a point. When looking at the עמל we said "okay, that's just a little too much focus on man.." then when looking at the נהנה we said "whoa, that's just too much G-d.." Then when seeing the middle (the יראי אלוקים) we were a little more accepting.

I think קהלת is trying to show us that there are moments in our lives where it seems like הכל הבל, like we're confused and don't know what to believe really. Are we focusing on man (עמל) or G-d (נהנה)? Whatever it is, whatever our frustrations are.. it will ultimately go back to the middle, and normalize. 

שלמה was a great king. We know that he had a hard time and fell from grace, but he's still considered a very great king. How could he be showing us all negativity? I think it'd make things easier to say that he's just trying to teach us something: despite our moments of extreme anger and our varying mindsets -- things will always normalize and we'll find our balance. 

Obviously we haven't finished the Sefer yet, so I can't say for sure, but this little theory of mine is definitely comforting me in the meantime.

How would y'all interpret the extreme negativity that we've found in קהלת so far?