The price of absolute freedom from necessity is, in a sense, life itself, or rather the substitution of vicarious life for real life. … The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the “easy life of the gods” would be a lifeless life.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist

The Human Condition, ch. 16 “Labor” (1958)