Meaningful Work
Reflections on work, labour, action, effort, attention, and memory.
There is a table installed around the trunk of a tree that always catches my attention when I walk through my favourite park in The Hague. Two chairs are placed around the table, and I’ve always loved how they seem to invite passersby to sit down and have a conversation. Yesterday, while walking through the park—affectionately nicknamed “Escher Park” by me, as the Dutch name feels too cold to pronounce—my eyes once again rested on the table and the two chairs surrounding the tree.
I’ve approached this spot many times, even sat at the table once, but only yesterday did I notice the quote carved into the table in English, Czech, and Latin: “Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.” The words are attributed to Václav Havel, the Czech writer, dissident, and statesman who played a pivotal role in the democratic transformation of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. Havel also wrote:
“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”
Václav Havel
Reflecting on his words, I want to share my own relationship with (meaningful) work, how it has evolved over the years, and some of the clarity I’ve gained that has helped ease the tension between working for survival and working for fulfilment—two realms I’ve had to navigate separately.
I longed to do meaningful work. Yet, for some years, I found myself not doing much work at all—or not the kind of work I considered nourishing or lasting. Or, at least, that’s something I have been telling myself.
By meaningful work, I mean work that produces lasting things, creates small and steady ripple effects that fulfil us, and goes beyond mere survival. This definition has been evolving for me ever since I started earning a living. The lines between work for survival (labour) and work for fulfilment (creative and intellectual pursuits) have always been too thick and wide, creating a persistent and draining tension in the background—one that has never left me.
Over time, that tension has loosened slightly as I’ve reflected more deeply on my own personal, evolving definition of good work and the interplay between labour and work—how each informs the other. To borrow a phrase that I want to remember often: how we do anything is how we do everything.
The tension I’ve felt between work and labour—more precisely, spending too much time and energy on labour without being successful at getting paid for my work—has only been heightened by my experience as a working immigrant. I began my working life abroad, in foreign countries, and never worked or earned a salary in my country of origin, Romania. I left while still a student. What followed was a journey through three countries (Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands), several career transitions (NGO, academia, IT/Data, UX), and mostly unpaid creative projects which were fulfilling (writing, hosting salons, workshops)—all of this in the span of just eight years.
The search for “meaningful work”—work that sustains, fulfils, and connects—changed its trajectory and intensity in the different places that I lived, being hindered or enhanced by the energy, effort, and attention I poured into what I was doing and thinking about daily.
This search often felt too difficult—I was frequently in Zugzwang, especially when coupled with earning a living and navigating migration across different countries. What helped me most when I lost my spark—what Clarice Lispector calls coup de grâce, passion—was reflecting on the path itself: pouring effort and attention into understanding work, myself, and how this relationship evolves through lived experience.
This awareness added more meaning to work, which I had seen as simply a “job,” and more connection to the work that I found rewarding, enlarging. I think that good work, and by that, I mean work that is good for us individually, has the ability to inform and impact every aspect of our lives. Good work is a living, unending conversation between our lives (work, labour, action) and the lives of others.
Insights from Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Angeliki Antoniou
In moments of frustration and lethargy with my relationship with work, and the different types of outputs and exchanges this entails, it has always helped me to return to certain ideas, categorizations, and ways of positioning myself with what I do—to understand the different ways my work sustains my life, adds meaning, connects me with people, and unfolds into unknown and known ways.
In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt wrote about the differences between work, labour, and action, offering a compelling framework for understanding human activity. Labour, she argued, corresponds to the biological processes of life—it is repetitive and necessary for survival, such as growing food or tending to basic needs. Work, on the other hand, involves creating lasting objects or structures, shaping the world beyond mere survival. It is the realm of craftsmanship and the production of tangible, enduring artefacts that outlive their creators. Action, the third category, is the highest expression of human activity in Arendt’s view. It occurs in the public sphere through speech, interaction, and collective deeds, allowing individuals to reveal themselves, form relationships, and shape the course of history.
Reflecting on Arendt’s framework, action has been the most rewarding form of activity for me in recent years—action in the form of hosting online and in-person salons (group conversations) and interacting with other people with the purpose of working together towards a worthy goal.
There is some sort of freedom in understanding in what ways our labour helps us continue our work as we keep striving for action. I think the only problem for me was when labour was so energy-draining that I didn’t have much left for work and action.
Another shift in my relationship with work happened when I acknowledged and cemented into myself the importance of prolonged attention and effort in everything that I do—and for that, I have to thank Simone Weil for her wonderful work about attention:
“So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need.”
Simone Weil
Weil, in her essay Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God, emphasizes the intrinsic value of attention and effort, regardless of the immediate outcome or correctness of a task. The passage reflects her belief that cultivating attention—the ability to focus deeply and with care—is not merely an intellectual exercise but a spiritual and moral practice. The habits of mind and spirit we cultivate in the smallest tasks prepare us for our greatest responsibilities.
Alongside Arendt and Weil, a more recent work that reshaped my understanding of meaningful work is a Greek movie from 2020, directed and written by Angeliki Antoniou, entitled Green Sea, which I happened to stumble upon online a week ago. All Greek movies I’ve seen so far have a visceral melancholy that is instructive and informative, rather than simply cathartic.
In Green Sea, the protagonist, Anna, is a woman who doesn’t remember who she is, and in order to stay alive, she needs to find a job. She finds it in the form of a cook at a fish tavern. She doesn’t remember her previous work, her calling, but she knows that she can cook, so she spends her days cooking for a few regulars of that fish tavern.
The plot struck me because I’ve seen it from the angle of work and memory—more precisely, how good, meaningful work makes us remember who we are and what we strive for. In contrast, work that’s not fulfilling can make us forget.
To return to Havel’s words: “Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning,” I’d like to add that meaning comes with prolonged attention and effort—in all the things that we try to do well.
Meaningful work is not just about what we produce or achieve in a long-lasting way but about how it shapes us and the relationships it fosters. It is a conversation between our inner lives and the world around us, one that continually evolves as we move through the cycles of labour, creation, and action.
In this ongoing conversation, I hope to keep finding meaning—and, in doing so, remembering what I am supposed to remember about myself and the world.
Onwards,
Patricia-Andra Hurducaș
"Good work is a living, unending conversation between our lives (work, labour, action) and the lives of others."
Enjoyed this essay very much.
When younger, I struggled for decades with the questions you raise. Never discovered or created lasting answers. Suspect there are no such answers. Only "attention and effort."
Which, it occurs to me, may be what Buddhists call "practice."