What makes a meaningful life? It’s an often strenuous, and in no way uniformly happy, existence compelled by service to some higher calling—higher, anyway, than selfish gratification. It’s also an explainable life, simple enough to be told back to you as a story, but it keeps in touch with the numinous beyond. And without a sense of belonging, absent good humor and loving companions among whom you never doubt that you are home, there’s no point.

The meaning of life has these four parts, writes WEEKLY STANDARD alumna Emily Esfahani Smith in The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters—purpose, storytelling, transcendence, and belonging. These “four pillars of meaning” are necessary prerequisites to support a rich existence, Smith illustrates with social science research and tales from her travels. She met a young man searching for belonging beyond his tight-knit island community in the middle of the Chesapeake; stargazers in awe of the unknown infinite at an astronomical observatory in West Texas; and terminally ill patients who tell their stories to recover the will to live their final days.