When I say engaged and meaningful - I mean it in the purest sense of the words, whereas you seem to equate it to "unserious".

Back to concrete questions: Are business leaders and educators presenting problems in a way that people connect with and see the value of? Are they providing an environment that makes people want to work hard and makes them feel empowered to take on difficult challenges?

Take History education for example. I'd say the answer to the above questions are "no".

* Most students who take a History class in a typical American school don't see how memorizing dates for tests connects to anything meaningful in their life or understanding of the world.

* I'd say educators don't or can't spend much time or effort connecting the dots or presenting information in a way that inspires people to ask deeper questions.

Instead, the focus is on rote memorization in preparation for flawed standardized state tests which themselves serve as the basis for obtaining federal funding to run the school itself.

Not to mention teachers themselves are underpaid and under-resourced while the students are forced to wake up at 6am (often not getting enough sleep) to catch the bus, sit in uncomfortable chairs for 8hrs a day with no agency, and then we're surprised that they're not excited by people talking at them all day?

Put another way, let's say you show up to a restaurant that serves shitty food, has a shitty environment, and the server get your order all wrong - you pay for this with your time and money. Do you think it's reasonable for the head chef to complain that customers are ungrateful and should be happy they got food at all? If the restaurant down the street takes the care to get all these things right, are customers entitled for choosing that restaurant every time instead?

Work is work and you can choose to engage yourself with it or not. Obviously, employers should not mistreat their employees, but ultimately they're all there to do whatever it is the business does and the point is to all succeed together as a business, not to nurture the personal growth of the employees.

If a server can't be bothered to make sure an order is correct the customer doesn't care whether the environment was sufficiently engaging or not, they only care about their order being right.

It's not that long ago that most people's "job" was growing enough food to survive. Nature didn't care if you found this fulfilling or engaging, you either did it or you starved. I can guarantee that if your life and your family's lives depended on growing enough potatoes to last through the winter, you'd be very interested and engaged in how to grow potatoes. It is an incredible luxury that we can even consider things like whether we feel engaged or meaning in our work.

There's meaning to be had in all honest work that serves a purpose. It's up to you to find it. If people are going to sit around and passively wait for someone to "inspire" them, they're either going to be very unsatisfied with their lives or fall prey to the first charismatic huckster that comes along. Nobody else can tell you how to find meaning in your life, you have to make it for yourself.