So bare with me while I try to relate something that has no relevance to Kohelet. It makes sense in my mind but I am not sure how it will go while I express it on paper.
So I was looking for a blog post to comment on and I came across Racheli's blog post about that they were all opinions and that they had experiences which created their opinions.
This made me think of something that we had learned in mussar: The difference between being sympathetic and empathetic.
Being sympathetic is feeling bad for someone while empathetic is actually experiencing it and feeling it with them.
In Kohelet, a lot of the times I disagree with the opinions of the Amal, Nehene, Chacham, and Y.E. Sometimes I even think that they are so ridiculous that I cannot even believe them.
In one particular instance I got really angered by the Chacham who was saying that G-d was not so extremely present in that time and he did not make miracles. I then got angered because I thought in this era G-d is rarely showing himself, even less than he did back then.
In mussar though, I realized that I do not know what it was actually like back then. I cannot be empathetic and feel how much G-d existed back then. I cannot feel the connection that the characters had with him either.
A lot of the times when I look at these philosophies and think they are crazy it is because I have never experienced them. I never really understood what Shlomo was saying through all of these character and philosophies. Okay, I learned about them and they made sense but they never made sense to ME. I always thought a lot of them were dumb and made no sense. Just like you always tell us, we have to get into the character and see it from their viewpoint. Kohelet is teaching me that it is extremely hard to understand the philosophies unless you are empathetic and actually get into character.
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