striving

Etymology

verb

1. present participle and gerund of strive

noun

1. Effort; the act of one who strives.
   Repudiating the excessive sexualism of Freud and insisting upon the importance of the food-seeking impulse, especially in childhood, he regards all the primary impulses as differentiations of one fundamental energy, the life force which sustains all our strivings, both conscious and unconscious […] 1918, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine
   Do we really want all those strivings and contrivings—all those thoughts and assumptions someone has cleverly etched into the hardware and software we are using—to remain invisible? 2007, Steve Talbott, Devices of the Soul, page 192