Wisdom and Folly are Meaningless

Note: For an orderly and contextual reading, please refer to the first post in the series.

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,
and also madness and folly.
What more can the king's successor do
than what has already been done?
I saw that wisdom is better than folly,
just as light is better than darkness.
The wise man has eyes in his head,
while the fool walks in darkness;
but I came to realize
that the same fate overtakes them both.

Then I thought in my heart,

"The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
What then do I gain by being wise?"
I said in my heart,
"This too is meaningless."
For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
In days to come both will be forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise man too must die!