Please read “E1. Meaning to the Meaningless” before reading any of my other articles on Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes 6

Babies are born happy. Some of the biggest smiles I have seen were on the faces of babies. When a baby is unhappy, they let us know by crying. Hold them, feed them, snuggle them and love them and they respond with happiness. Something happens to us between the time we are born and the time we die. Many people lose their ability to find happiness. Some children have that happiness stolen from them by abusive and wicked adults. What a tragedy, what evil; we must fight it in every way possible. Solomon is not writing at this point about people who have had their happiness stolen. He is writing about people who appear to have everything they could wish for, and yet are still not happy. He decides they are unhappy because God does not grant them the ability to enjoy life. He is wrong again, as we have already noted we are born with the ability to be happy. If people who have everything they need are not happy, it is not God’s fault. It is interesting that Solomon himself observed some of the reasons people who have much are unhappy.

People are unhappy because they do not appreciate what they have. If circumstances forced a rich man to go a week without eating, a loaf of moldy bread would make him happy. In his hunger, he would appreciate what he had. It is possible to have so much that we appreciate none of it. Solomon refers to what he calls the roving appetite. A person with a roving appetite is never happy. No matter what they have, they are always seeing something they do not have. They always want more, and they are never content. We generate the feeling of happiness from within. Contentment, thankfulness, appreciation and satisfaction all generate a feeling of happiness. Our happiness is not dependent upon the world around us. Our happiness is dependent upon the attitudes within us. When we are unhappy, we do not need more things; we need to change the way we think about things.