13. (a) How does Ecclesiastes 9:4, 5 help us to have a proper view of striving for prominence or power? (b) What facts should we face if this life is all there is? (See footnote.)

¹³ What does such prominence or authority amount to in the long run? As one generation goes and another comes, the prominent or powerful people pass off the scene and are forgotten. That is true of builders, musicians and other artists, social reformers, and so on, just as it is true of most politicians and military leaders. Of those occupations, how many specific individuals do you know of who lived between the years 1700 and 1800? Solomon rightly assessed matters, saying: “A live dog is better off than a dead lion. For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, . . . the remembrance of them has been forgotten.” (Ecclesiastes 9:4, 5) And if this life is all there is, then striving for prominence or power really is vanity.a