Note from the Editors
The following essay was written entirely during a 75-minute class period.
Natalie's professor nominated it for publication in Fresh Writing because he was deeply impressed by how she met the challenge of a timed, in-class essay with writing that is, in his words, "exemplary." Amid AI's growing influence, educators are looking for ways to safeguard their students' opportunities for intellectual growth, and the in-class essay is an increasingly popular assignment. Academic work is changing. Natalie has generously given permission to share her piece as it is, without the further drafting, reflection, and revision that she would have done, given more time and resources. With this in mind, her thoughtful discussion of the meaning of work is eminently worthy of our attention. We present this writer's work to you as an analysis in conversation with respected thinkers, examining practices and values that each of us must grapple with. We present it as a window into one intensely focused human mind, working creatively under tight constraints. We also present it as a sign of the times.
Though work is an indispensable element of human life, we tend to wish we could dispense with it. On average, people spend a total of 13 years at their workplaces, earning the wages they need to provide for themselves and their families at the expense of their time and energy. However, work is more than a transactional necessity; it has the potential to make us more fully ourselves. Finding meaning in one’s professional life is not only possible, but crucial for purposeful flourishing and self-actualization. In this essay, we will investigate how to find that meaning.
First, I will illustrate what it looks like to actively pursue meaning through work, drawing from Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and affirm the special importance of this particular source of meaning. Using Joseph Soloveitchik’s The Lonely Man of Faith, I will explain that work itself is valuable in light of the human vocation to fill and subdue the earth, a calling that can be recognized by either faith or reason. Dorothy Sayers’s essay “Why Work?” lays the cornerstone: work offers a higher form of compensation than money to those who delight in creating good things. “Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie unveils how workers can leverage the lesser form of compensation to meaningfully impact their communities. Together, these four perspectives demonstrate how we can transform a daily burden into a lifelong source of purpose, no matter our individual circumstances.
Psychologist Viktor Frankl originally published his book Man’s Search for Meaning in 1946, shortly after his liberation from the Nazi concentration camps. His central theme is that humans must take responsibility and seek out meaning, instead of waiting passively for it: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that he is the one who is asked.” Frankl outlines three ways of answering life’s questions about one’s purpose, and they all share the requirement that a person move beyond himself to find meaning, for “the more one forgets himself… the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.” The three ways are creative work, transcendental experiences (like loving relationships), and brave suffering. Frankl’s path to meaning through creative work involves active engagement with one’s career, and he highlights how work can be consequential enough to provide a reason for living. During the war, he looked forward to publishing his lost manuscript and envisioned himself speaking to students in a lecture hall about the psychology of concentration camps. After the war, he treated patients who found the will to carry on when they realized they had unique professional purposes that no one else could fulfill.
Some may say they feel no need to derive meaning from their work because they already find it in other areas of their lives, such as their loving relationships. While it is true that there are other avenues to meaning in life, work is the most constant, time-consuming, and unavoidable. When we do find meaning in our professional lives, we ground our search for purpose in the realities of daily existence. The mundane can become remarkable, and we can embrace life without reservation.
Furthermore, human work has inherent value. In his 1965 essay The Lonely Man of Faith, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik examines the two contrasting creation accounts in the first chapters of Genesis through the lens of a dual human nature. The first Adam seeks to “fill the earth and subdue it” through conquest, dominion, and creation in light of his majesty and dignity as a divine image-bearer. Closely tied with career, this side of the human vocation enables scientific advancements, political structures, and artistic endeavors. In Soloveitchik’s theological reading, Adam I strives to become more fully human by rising from “coexistence with nature” to an intelligent, planned life. Adam II, the other component of man’s dialectical role, is more contemplative and seeks to grasp the why of the cosmos, rather than master the how. Soloveitchik believes that modern Adam I personalities too often reject this second nature, which we might understand as pursuing meaning; however, he consistently upholds the merit and validity of the first Adam. Creation is a worthy imitatio Dei and thus authentically human.
Not all will find Soloveitchik’s source material convincing, but his analysis points to widely acknowledged truths about human nature. Primitive societies were characterized by undifferentiated tasks, while our modern world grows increasingly specialized. Humanity’s drives to achieve dignity and purpose combined to bring about a society with thousands of distinct roles, allowing individuals to actualize themselves through more unique professional contributions to the world. But what is the precise mechanism for finding meaning in that work?
Dorothy Sayers’s 1942 essay “Why Work?” breaks down how work becomes meaningful, painting a picture of an industrious Adam in harmony with his reflective, purpose-oriented side. She asserts that we should not consider our work as “a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God.” Work, Sayers explains, is not primarily something one does to live, but the very thing one lives to do. By focusing on serving the work and creating something objectively good—ideally in the career most suited to one’s talents—a person can earn a form of compensation higher than money. We know that money by itself is insufficient as a source of ultimate meaning; even the affluent commit suicide. Satisfaction from a job well done is an indicator that a person has truly lived by exercising his human nature, striving for creative dominion, and holding his head high in life’s interrogation room. A worker who can reflect on his product and call it very good can also answer the question “What is the meaning of life?”
Although this satisfaction from self-actualization is the most valuable compensation workers can receive, it is important to recognize that they do also receive money, and, in many cases, more than they and their dependents need. Even certain low-wage workers in the United States can become millionaires through frugality and regular contributions to a retirement plan. Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 essay “Wealth” reveals how we can leverage excess money, a byproduct of work, to meaningfully contribute to our communities through philanthropy. This love for our fellow man is another source of meaning that results from working and living outwardly, and while Sayers rightly claims that “serving the community” is flawed as a primary aim of work itself, it would be unwise to overlook the potential of money in the search for meaning.
We can actively administer the excess wealth we accumulate during our lifetimes by organizing benefactions for the poor. We can help those who are willing to help themselves advance on their own quests for purpose, providing them with libraries, education, and other opportunities for self-actualization. This philanthropy transforms “the surplus wealth of the few” into “the property of the many,” and, as we have learned, humans enrich themselves chiefly by doing good work, not by simply gathering money. Empowering others to rise from mechanical subsistence and seek out meaning as we have done shares our truest form of wealth and further dignifies our own lives.
Many people may still worry that their specific careers have no meaning to offer them. They may be unable to enter the professions that would best satisfy their ambitions and allow them to realize their values in the workplace, or they may find their efforts are underappreciated due to the nature of their jobs. Not all can find careers on par with Sayers’s view of ideal work; one might argue that human freedom is too restricted for everyone to find meaning in their professional lives. Frankl writes, as if in response to this very concern, that our freedom “is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”
Again, the essential thing to remember is that humans bring meaning to work, and not the other way around. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated the dignity of all effortful human undertakings in a beautiful way: “Set out to do a good job and do that job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn couldn’t do it any better. If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music… and sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
Author
