Finding Your “Why” Through the Expressive Arts
How creativity reconnects us to meaning, presence, and purpose
What if the true meaning of life was found in the question itself, rather than in the answer? In this fast-paced world, we are programmed to live on autopilot. Rarely do we stop to analyze what we are doing—or even what we are feeling. Day after day, the mundane, the worries, the stress, and the expectations take over, creating a growing sense of emptiness and exhaustion.
But Expressive Arts offer us something rare and powerful: a way back to ourselves.
Through creativity—movement, writing, painting, music, and storytelling—we’re given permission to pause, feel, and reflect. We’re not looking for the perfect answer to “Who am I and why am I here?” We’re letting those questions live inside us and allowing art to lead the way.
“Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then he perceives, in all its depth, the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry, thought, and belief try to communicate that salvation and human growth are only possible through love and in love.”
— Viktor Frankl
What Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning shows us is that even in the most painful and horrific circumstances—in his case, being a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps—there remains an opportunity to connect with our essence and discover our personal meaning in life.
There is something incredibly powerful that human beings possess: freedom. According to Frankl, the freedom to choose our personal attitude is what determines whether we are worthy of our suffering; it is the moral dignity that difficult situations offer us. Sometimes we forget—caught in the cycle of routine—that this human freedom still exists. And within that freedom lies the opportunity to question and reflect on our lives.
When we sit with a blank page, move our bodies without choreography, or lose ourselves in a color or a sound, we are reminded that we are not here to be perfect. We are here to be present. To notice. To express.
But can we truly find meaning on our own, or do we need others to help us define it?
When we allow ourselves to dive into this personal questioning through creative expression, something else may happen. We may realize that there is no single, definitive answer, and we begin to seek that answer in community. In doing so, we allow others to walk with us, helping us rewrite old stories and create new ones—together. Life’s meaning is deeply tied to relationships and connections with others.
Giving ourselves the chance to know who we are, to connect with our essence and our compassion, also opens the door to connect with others. In that connection, we begin to hear—often without realizing it—the answer to our purpose. And that answer almost always leads to service and collective well-being.
We may choose to connect with something greater, like social responsibility, compassion, commitment, and human connection, and begin to approach these existential questions in community. The Expressive Arts holds each of these values with gentleness and depth, reminding us that healing and discovery can happen in playful, creative, and unexpected ways—together.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
In the end, the question Who am I and why am I here? does not have a single answer. But in the space that Expressive Arts create, we are invited to explore that question—not with fear, but with curiosity. And in that exploration, we find the spark of something deeply human, deeply meaningful. A quiet knowing that maybe, just maybe, this journey of creation is the purpose itself.
