A wage is needed to sustain life; but if life is perpetually postponed in order to earn a wage, the equation does not close. Meaning is not waking each morning with enthusiasm; it is knowing where the time we give is going.
The alarm rings in the morning, we get ready, set out and spend the greater part of the day at work. When we return home in the evening there is time enough only to prepare for the next day. When this cycle lasts for years a person does not merely grow tired; they meet the question “why am I doing all this?” That the job provides an income does not silence the question entirely. A wage is needed to sustain life, but if life itself is perpetually postponed in order to earn a wage, the equation does not close. The crisis of meaning in commuting arises less from an individual’s lack of motivation than from the broken bond between our time and the world we produce with it.
Is the journey not part of the work?
Working time usually begins on entering the workplace and ends on leaving. Yet preparing for work, the hours spent travelling and recovering after returning home are also time the job takes from a person’s life. In large cities two or three hours a day can pass in transport. No wage is paid for this time; still the worker spends it because of the job. As housing prices push people outside the centre, the invisible cost of work in time falls more heavily on those with lower incomes.
Remote work can reduce this loss, but it also removes the physical boundary between work and home. The computer shuts down while notifications continue; because the worker is “at home anyway” they are considered reachable at any moment. As the journey disappears, mental working time can lengthen. The problem is not only where we work but how much claim the job makes on our time.
Is there such a thing as meaningless work?
When a job is plainly useful to society a person can more easily make sense of their exhaustion. But when a worker thinks their task contributes nothing real to anyone and merely sustains a process or an appearance within the institution, they experience a different kind of burnout. A report is written to produce another report, a meeting to plan the next meeting, a performance record to prove that work was done. A person may be busy yet not believe in what they produce.
The problem in this case is not laziness. On the contrary, a person tires because they must give their energy to an activity they find meaningless. The more the institution’s language tries to make the task look strategic and indispensable, the wider the distance grows between lived reality and official narrative. The worker does not merely do the job; they must also behave as though they believed it meaningful. The emotional role can be as consuming as the task itself.
Why is life postponed to the weekend?
The working week divides time in two: the days to be endured and the short intervals in which one is expected to live. From Monday to Friday energy is spent at work; rest, friendship, care, learning and personal tasks are squeezed into the weekend. Yet recovering from fatigue and preparing for the new week takes an important part of that time. In their free time a person repairs their capacity to work rather than discovering what they truly want.
Holidays likewise become both the reward and the instrument of being able to work all year. Within a few days one is expected to rest intensely, travel and be happy. Then the routine returns. When the meaning of life is perpetually deferred to the coming weekend, the holiday, the promotion or retirement, today turns into a corridor merely to be passed through. And when the awaited period arrives, a person may have forgotten what they wanted to do.
The pressure to turn your passion into work
The popular answer to the crisis of meaning is to find work you love. “Turn your passion into your job and you will never work a day,” it is said. The phrase captures a person’s desire to build a bond between their skill and their work; but it leaves the whole burden of the problem to the individual. Not every necessary job can be an object of passion, and not everyone can make a living from their interest. Moreover, when a beloved activity is tied to the market, deadlines, clients and income pressure can change its meaning.
The language of passion can also make exploitation easier. In art, media, academia and the aid sector people are called to accept low pay, uncertain hours and insecurity because they love the work. When they object they are told they are not sufficiently devoted. The employer demands not only labour but the worker’s identity and love. Yet the return for meaningful work is not unpaid sacrifice; it is fair conditions in which a person can sustain their contribution.
Why is individual escape not enough?
Leaving a job and moving to the countryside, working freelance or living more simply can be a real way out for some people. But not everyone’s debts, burden of care, health and safety net are the same. Stories of individual escape can turn a structural problem into a test of personal courage. Whoever leaves looks free, whoever stays cowardly. Yet the necessary work of society will still be done by someone; the point is not to leave them behind but to change how that work is arranged.
The shared answer to the crisis of meaning is to reduce working hours, to share the burden of commuting, to increase decision-making power at work and to free livelihood from dependence on a single employer. A person should be able to see the result of what they produce, to object to unnecessary tasks, and not to receive only crumbs of time for the life outside work. The meaning of work is not granted by a management presentation; it forms in a relation in which a person can recognise the need their activity serves, its result and its partners.
The cycle of commuting may not disappear entirely. Life will always contain some compulsory and dull tasks. But on whom the obligations gather, how long they last and how they are decided can change. Working life need not be a waiting room that consumes existence. Meaning is not waking each morning with enthusiasm; it is knowing where the time we give is going, having a say over that direction, and not perpetually leaving living for later while we work in order to live.