The Power Of Meaning

Emily Esfahani Smith, a writer and instructor of positive psychology, argues that modern society's obsession with happiness has led people astray from what truly makes life worth living: meaning. Drawing on psychology, philosophy, literature, and the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people, she identifies four "pillars of meaning": belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. She contends that cultivating these pillars leads to deeper fulfillment than the pursuit of pleasure alone.

Smith begins with her own childhood in a Sufi meetinghouse in Montreal, where her parents hosted members of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order, a school of Islamic mysticism. The Sufis gathered twice weekly to meditate, sing the poetry of Rumi and Attar, and practice mohabbat, or loving-kindness. Their lives, oriented around self-denial, service, and compassion rather than personal gain, modeled for Smith what a meaning-centered existence looks like. She traces the human yearning for meaning from the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh through philosophy and religion, arguing that while faith once answered life's fundamental questions, its authority in the developed world has declined, leaving many people adrift. At college, she found that academic philosophy had abandoned existential questions and that campus culture prioritized career success over reflection on how to live.

Smith introduces positive psychology, a field founded in 1998 by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman to study what makes life fulfilling. Although the field was intended to examine the good life broadly, research on happiness became its dominant branch. Smith contends this "happiness frenzy" has failed: Society is more miserable than ever, and research shows that chasing happiness can make people unhappy. She distinguishes between two philosophical paths: hedonia, the pursuit of pleasure traced from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristippus through utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and eudaimonia, Aristotle's concept of human flourishing through cultivating one's best qualities. A 2013 study led by psychologist Roy Baumeister found that while happy and meaningful lives overlap, the happy life is associated with being a "taker," while the meaningful life corresponds to being a "giver" and contributing beyond the self.

In her first chapter, Smith argues that a widespread crisis of meaning afflicts modern society. She tells the story of historian and philosopher Will Durant, who in 1930 failed to give a suicidal man a reason to live and subsequently wrote to leading intellectuals asking how they found significance during the Great Depression. She presents alarming statistics: U.S. depression rates have risen dramatically since 1960, and suicide rates reached a nearly 30-year high in 2016. A 2014 study of nearly 140,000 people across 132 countries found that wealthier nations reported higher happiness but lower meaning, and that the variable predicting suicide was not happiness but the absence of meaning. Smith recounts Leo Tolstoy's existential crisis: Despite wealth, fame, and literary achievement, the Russian novelist concluded around age 50 that life was meaningless in the face of death, but he eventually found his way back through religious faith and devotion to others. She then turns to Albert Camus, who grew up in poverty in Algeria, lost his father in World War I, and confronted mortality after a teenage tuberculosis diagnosis. In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus argued that life's absurdity demands neither faith nor suicide; instead, humans can create meaning for themselves. Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, becomes a model of meaning through his defiant embrace of the struggle.

Smith's chapter on belonging examines Tangier Island, Virginia, a tiny Chesapeake Bay community where nearly 500 residents function as an extended family. She introduces Edward Pruitt, a Navy senior chief petty officer who left the island for college and initially struggled without the daily interactions he had taken for granted. She defines belonging through two conditions psychologists identify: relationships based on mutual care, and frequent pleasant interactions. She recounts René Spitz's seminal 1945 study comparing children in a sterile orphanage, where 23 of 88 died, with children in a prison nursery where mothers could comfort them, where none died. Smith also profiles the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an international organization of 60,000 medieval enthusiasts whose shared chivalric values, frequent gatherings, and supportive networks create strong belonging. She introduces organizational psychologist Jane Dutton's concept of "high quality connections," brief positive interactions where both people feel valued, and reports on a study of hospital janitors who felt invisible when ignored by doctors but found meaning in their work when colleagues acknowledged them.

The chapter on purpose opens with Ashley Richmond, a zookeeper at the Detroit Zoo who finds even cleaning stalls meaningful because it serves her broader goal of improving animals' lives. Smith defines purpose, drawing on developmental psychologist William Damon, as a stable, far-reaching goal involving contribution to the world. She tells the story of Coss Marte, who grew up on New York's Lower East Side, ran a drug operation by age 19, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. After doctors warned he might die of a heart attack, Coss transformed his health and began training other inmates. A spiritual experience in solitary confinement led him to realize he had been harming others; he wrote a business plan, won a competition through Defy Ventures, an organization helping street entrepreneurs go legal, and founded ConBody, a fitness studio that grew to over 5,000 clients. Smith argues that purpose requires self-knowledge and that even people in unglamorous jobs can find it by reframing tasks as service: A NASA janitor said he was "helping put a man on the moon" (95), and university fundraisers who met a scholarship recipient they had helped fund raised 171 percent more money.

In her chapter on storytelling, Smith argues that the narratives people construct about their lives create coherence and meaning. She profiles Emeka Nnaka, a semipro football player paralyzed from the chest down at 21, who reframed his story as falling off "the wrong mountain" and discovering the one he was meant to climb by volunteering as a youth mentor and enrolling in a counseling program. Psychologist Dan McAdams's research on "narrative identity" shows that people driven to contribute to society tend to tell "redemptive stories" in which suffering leads to positive outcomes, while "contamination stories," in which events go from good to bad, are associated with anxiety and depression. Smith also presents research on counterfactual thinking: Imagining how life might have unfolded differently makes pivotal experiences feel more meaningful. Yale historian Carlos Eire, airlifted from Cuba as a child during Operation Peter Pan, a program that evacuated children after Fidel Castro's revolution, concluded that the hardships of exile gave him empathy "for people who are at the bottom" (118).

Smith's chapter on transcendence takes readers to the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, where 500 people gathered for a stargazing event beneath some of the darkest skies in the continental United States. She defines transcendence as an experience of rising above the everyday world to a higher reality, citing philosopher and psychologist William James's four qualities of mystical experience: passivity, transience, ineffability, and noetic insight. She profiles Cory Muscara, who spent six months as a Buddhist monk in Burma meditating up to 20 hours daily; during one session, his sense of separation from the world vanished entirely. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg's brain-imaging studies confirmed that at peak mystical moments, meditators show decreased activity in the brain region responsible for distinguishing self from not-self. Smith also tells the story of astronaut Jeff Ashby, whose experience seeing Earth from orbit shifted his values from personal achievement to global concern, a phenomenon scientists call the "Overview Effect."

In her chapter on growth, Smith argues that adversity can deepen meaning when people lean on the four pillars. She profiles Vietnam War veteran Bob Curry, whose untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) led to heavy drinking and a fatal drunk-driving accident. Curry eventually found healing through community with fellow veterans and founded Dryhootch, an alcohol-free gathering space for veterans. Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun identified five domains of post-traumatic growth: stronger relationships, new purposes, inner strength, deeper spirituality, and renewed appreciation for life. Psychologist James Pennebaker's research on expressive writing showed that people who wrote about traumatic experiences for 15 minutes a day demonstrated improved physical and mental health, but only when they actively made sense of what happened rather than simply venting emotions.

Smith's final chapters examine how institutions build cultures of meaning. The Future Project places "Dream Directors" in public schools to help at-risk teenagers find purpose. Life is Good, a $100 million apparel brand founded by brothers Bert and John Jacobs, channels its optimism into a foundation serving over 120,000 children. Encore.org reframes retirement as an opportunity for continued contribution, and StoryCorps provides recording booths where ordinary people share and preserve their stories at the Library of Congress. In her conclusion, Smith profiles psychiatrist William Breitbart, whose eight-session meaning-centered therapy for terminal cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reduced hopelessness and desire for death while improving quality of life. She closes with the story of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna who was transported to a concentration camp in 1942; by liberation in 1945, most of his family had perished. During a dawn march, thinking of his wife, Frankl grasped that "the salvation of man is through love and in love" (228). Smith argues that meaning is found not in grand revelations but in humble acts: greeting a stranger, listening to a loved one, sitting beneath a starry sky. "These may be humble acts on their own," she writes. "But taken together, they light up the world" (230).