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I would say through making. Making things gives life purpose, something to struggle against and triumph over. And you also get to learn. Learning for learning's sake doesn't give you the sense of purpose as learning in order to make something great .

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Marx and others who elaborated on his work developed the notion of alienation under capital—the notion that capitalism really screws up the specific sort of pleasure you describe. The idea, if I'm not messing it up too badly, is that a worker under capitalism encounters the stuff they make as something alien to them—and in fact something that shapes and brings the worker into being rather than the other way around. I know I experienced this phenomenon all the time staring at code on a screen when I was working in tech.

> And you also get to learn.

I lumped making under the broad umbrella of “learning”.

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