UNIQUE QUEST: Every person's search for meaning in life takes on an individual form, be it through art, poetry, music or other forms of self-expression. -- PHOTO: AFP

Yes, it is a cliche, but I searched my heart. What colours are my feelings, I asked the maelstrom in me.

Instinctively, but slowly, I took up a square-tipped brush and dabbed some carmine red onto the canvas.

The colours spoke to me and the eye and brain coordinated to mix the red with yellow for a golden tint and to dab it here, smear some emerald green there and give that bit of ultramarine blue a touch of Payne's grey.

Over an hour, the small 18cm by 18cm canvas took on vibrant hues.

The final result is a mass of reds, oranges and yellows, done in whirls and dabs and pricks. This is a map of my feelings this week, I told myself.

For that one hour in a little studio in Toa Payoh, I got in touch with a different part of myself.

My mind tends to be of an analytical bent. But put a paint brush in my hand, an empty watercolour sheet and a few tubes of paint in front of me, and a different part of my brain is engaged: a part that goes beyond my cerebral way of looking at the world, to the shadows and inchoate feelings beneath.

When I paint, I tap into some inner recesses of emotion and, I like to think, wisdom.

I first took up painting when going through chemotherapy for cancer a few years ago.

The Boston hospital where I was treated had a five-session expressive arts therapy programme which I joined.

During one session, we painted our feelings. Another session, we played with musical instruments and made sounds. At yet another session, we wrote and drew in our journals and read out poetry to each other.

Amidst the horror of disease, from the nettle of anxiety and fear, we plucked from those hours the flower of peace and laughter.

I bought my own paints shortly after and started watercolour painting.

I have a facility with words, and writing comes naturally. I have no natural affinity for painting, so every stroke, every choice of colour, is not guided by the deft instinct I use to choose my words, but is an act grounded in hope and faith.

Art as a source of therapy has been around since at least the 1940s, when psychiatrists studied the doodlings and drawings of mental health patients for clues into their psyche.

These days, art therapy is an established and growing field. In Singapore, art therapists work in hospitals, schools and the community, with kids dealing with trauma, adults dealing with stress and the elderly with dementia.

Whether used as a formal tool for patients, or just dabbled in in the privacy of your home, art has a therapeutic value that heals.

The studio where I spent an hour recently is not an art therapy studio, but an ordinary art- and-craft studio where people can come to make things with their hands.

Mr Moses Sia was a physics teacher who became principal of a primary school. Although he found his teaching career fulfilling, something in him wanted to try something else. At 39, he had a 'mid-life crisis', as he laughingly put it.

He had dreams of opening a cafe in some pretty surroundings. After talking to people and searching around, he decided to combine his lifelong love of art with his dream of opening a cafe.

The result is a charming shop space at Block 125, Toa Payoh Lorong 1, quaintly named Pauseability. (www.pauseability.com.sg)

I got to know Moses after he e-mailed me in response to a column I wrote celebrating Singapore as a 'city of possibilities'.

How about pause-ability, he asked. Do Singaporeans have the ability to pause, wonder, create?

Intrigued, I e-mailed him back and was introduced to his studio, which I visited recently.

It is a bright, cheerful space with shelves of art-and-craft material: coloured craft paper, beads and string, plastic bead eyes, even a sewing machine.

Anyone can spend an hour or so using all the materials to create some form of art or craft, for $9 to $12 and a cup of freshly made tea.

In one corner sits a round beige carpet with green threads winding like a labyrinth.

'Labyrinths are a way of finding pattern and meaning in life,' says Moses. 'And as Victor Frankl notes, we are all searching for meaning in our lives.'

Frankl's 1946 book, Man's Search For Meaning, is a graphic yet inspiring account of his days in a Nazi concentration camp.

From his experience, he developed the insight that humankind is in search ultimately of meaning and purpose. He became a psychotherapist and developed the 'logotherapy' field of study.

According to him, each person must answer the question 'what is the meaning of life?' with his or her own life.

In other words, well-adjusted people find out the meaning of life by making their lives meaningful.

'Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognise that it is he who is asked.

'In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.'

Moses inspired me because he decided. at the age of 39, to follow his heart's desire and try something different. If he fails, he can do something else, he says, with a shrug.

I am 39 this year and groping, like every sentient feeling human, towards discovering life's meaning.

Frankl's words cheer me: that to find meaning in life, all I have to do is make my life meaningful.

muihoong@sph.com.sg

TIME TO STAND AND STARE

How about pause-ability? Do Singaporeans have the ability to pause, wonder, create?
MR MOSES SIA