The Quest for Meaningful Work: Stop searching, start creating.

When working becomes the most exciting thing you could possibly be doing.

If it is your calling,

it will keep calling.

Working on an art exhibition to protect the oceans, Holland.

The concept of meaningful work has been orbiting my mind the way the moon orbits our planet– ever present in my thoughts, most noticeable at night but still influential during the day. Every day. Omnipresently.

It is 3:32 a.m., and I am awake— again.

That time in which my dreams are the loudest, not letting me sleep.

Calling,

calling,

calling.

“There´s something grand awaiting for you, waiting for you to unfold it– you know there is.”

“Come on,

get up,

get out there,

get working.”

I´m in bed, eyes wide open— Images of events, projects and people I am surrounded by passing in front of my mind´s eye, like a carrousel— a wide smile no one else gets to see spreads to the back of my head.

Okay buddy, let´s see what we do about that in the morning!

So, morning comes, and my heart is already shouting:

“I want to,

need to,

work—

meaningfully.

Please,

please,

please,

allow me to work.”

Sounds dramatic? If your calling keeps infecting every thought of yours too, you´ve been there— you know we´re not overexagerating.

You wake up with the urge to create, to give, to contribute something that matters. Not just a paycheck, not just another day of meh work.

I see you,

I get you.

On meaningful work.

Let’s backtrack for a second— what exactly is meaningful work? You can tell me!

But,

for the sake of this post, I´ll share my interpretation of it, built upon the insights I´ve gained on my personal quest for meaning.

Moi and the book.

Let me share some snipets of wisdom from a little gem of a book I hold near and dear to my heart—Patagonia’s The Responsible Company. Yes, of course I own a copy of their beautifully designed book with the tree trunk print on the cover. You already know I’m that person. Here’s what they´ve told me:

“At it´s heart, meaningful work is to do something you love and are good at doing for a living”

And

“Meaningful work is doing things you love to do, often, with other people.”

Simple,

beautiful,

spot on.

My definition?

Meaningful work is doing what you love with and for the ones you love.

— Paula Cristobal

Theatre performance to connect the audience to the ocean, Holland.

We´ll get back to our friends at Patagonia when we talk about how to find that meaningful work in the following sections.

Now,

let´s get poetic and emotional.

You´ll see, here are some words that have put my world upside down and made me cry rivers. I warn you, if these words happen to find you at the right time, you may not ever be the same after reading this. You may want to warn your mother that she might never get her daughter/son back. Read with caution.

We´re opening the Great book now— The Prophet.

Al Khalid writes.

“You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.”

Wowza.

This on its own already challenges almost radically the reason many people have to work— let´s continue.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Oh my heart.

Think about that. Your work—your effort—could be the music of the world. But only if it’s done with love.

He goes on:

“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream.”

You develop the earth´s dream... through your work.

Can we please take a moment here?

Can you feel these words tingle all the way through and till your fingertips?

What´s that? I am crying again.

It makes me wonder,

could someone ever consider working as a fast fashion retail worker after reading this?

Let´s turn up the poetic volume— I suspect you will like this one.

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

Work is love made visible.

Work is love made visible.

And I know you may be thinking: What if you can’t work with love, or maybe—just maybe—you can’t even stand the work you’re doing? What then?

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

Before you raise your torches and rakes at me— I know not all of you are in a position where you can quit the jobo and go skip jumping on the Swiss hills.

So,

I won´t urge you to quit your job.

BUT,

I´ll invite you to take a break— a few minutes will do— and step back to consider whether you´re spending you days working with love… or indiference, just to fill your pockets with some moNeY$.

If the answer is the later… we might need some re-centering.

And I know. It’s easy to get stuck in the “well, I need a job to pay the bills” mindset. But trust me—if we keep doing work that leaves our soul in tatters, we’re baking bitter bread, and no one likes bitter bread.

Finding that meaningful work.

I recently watched A Quest For Meaning— for the third time.

As the title suggests, the doc is about a life changing journey of two friends gone to question the workings of the world. Just like you and I.

Every time I´ve watched it sets me up for an existential crisis.

There´s particularly one moment, at hour 1:21 that haunts me from the moment I first heard the wise, wrinkly, smiley man on the screen— Satush Kumar— talk to the camera man.

“I advice to you that when you leave university, you don´t seek for an employment— create an employment, create a livelihood for yourself”

Those words have shaken and crumbled any existing aspiration within me to pursue a stable, conventional life.

A crime scene— by Satush Kumar.

“In employment humans become the instrument to make money for the employer– you are only a tool.

You don´t want to make a human into an instrument of creating money.

You want to cultivate a creative being.”

So how do we create such an employment, dear Mr Kumar?— I ask.

The cheeky man leaves the scene without providing us with no roadmap—devastated.

But although he does not give us a map, he does give us a clue.

He says:

“Surrender to the processes of the universe– let things happen and you will be surprised. Trust yourself, trust other people, the process of the universe. You will enhance the universe and the universe will enrich you. But trust is the key.”

Tears.

And I note it down, hand written on my most beautiful notebook. I believe it, cause something inside me knows we´ve found the golden key within those words. We just gotta walk. Trust and walk. Walk the walk.

In trusting our intuition, and letting it guide us.

You don´t have to have it all crystal clear. But, I´ve found— you do need to fine tune your insticts so that when something feels right you´ll be able to recognize it, and follow it.

Back to the real world

Yvon and Vicent (authors of Patagonia´s book) have their say on this too. And they help us feel better about feeling lost.

They tell us most people don´t know at first what they love. But that needs not disharten us. What you become best at develops by trial and error— or by accident.

Surrender and trust, amigo.

Now, let´s take a closer look at Patagonia´s case— since I have the book at hand ;)

To illustrate how this may be true:

In the beginning Patagonia attracted the “dissafected”—people who loved climbing, surfing or vagabonding best and would go back to Ventura to pick up a seasonal job.

These were bright, restless and unconventional individuals who had´t felt a call towards a vocation and others who had sought and then abandoned one… or had pursued one that could not provide a living.

And why did they stay?

They found a job and a home in Patagonia because of it´s culture— they found congeniality with other “outsiders”. They liked how working there felt. They found a home.

There´s a paragraph I adore in the book.

“Many employees turned out to have a vocation working for a small, quirky company where no one knew what they couldn´t do so they ended up doing the things they had no idea they could do in the company of others doing the same thing.”

Ah, my heart is smiling.

Meaningful work, it turns out, is not only doing what we love but also giving back to the world– the two combined create the ground for a kind of ordinary human excellence that any business can treasure.

— Patagonia

I treasure that.

And let´s finish by talking about impact. Let´s bring some Margaret J. Wheatley to the mix.

“There is no power of change greater than a community discovering what it cares about”

Now my friends we´ve tapped into the secret formula.

How to find truly meaningful work?

Working with people you love + finding what you believe in + working on it with love.

That feels right.

I would love to hear about your personal quest in finding your path.

• What do you love doing most and who do you love doing it with?

• What is a project you´ve worked on that felt just right?

• What are you pursuing?

Thank you for reading!

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