I've known many people who were ready to go, ready to die. Not because they had found some final peace or transcendence, but because they were so repulsed by what their lives had become—in a word, cut off, or ugly.

Beauty can be found anywhere. One night, it began to snow outside. I remember my nurses complaining about driving through it. And there was no window in my room, but it was great to just imagine it coming down all sticky. Next day, one of my nurses smuggled in a snowball for me. She brought it in to the unit. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt holding that in my hand, and the coldness dripping onto my burning skin; the miracle of it all, the fascination as I watched it melt and turn into water. In that moment, just being any part of this planet in this universe mattered more to me than whether I lived or died. That little snowball packed all the inspiration I needed to both try to live and be OK if I did not.

As long as we have our senses—even just one—we have at least the possibility of accessing what makes us feel human—connected. Primal sensorial delights that say the things we don't have words for, impulses that make us stay present—no need for a past or a future.

If teasing unnecessary suffering out of the system was our first design cue, then tending to dignity by way of the senses, by way of the body—the aesthetic realm is design cue number two.

"Play" may sound like a funny word here. But it is also one of our highest forms of adaptation. Consider every major compulsory effort it takes to be human. The need for food has birthed cuisine. The need for shelter has given rise to architecture. The need for cover, fashion. And for being subjected to the clock, well, we invented music. So, since dying is a necessary part of life, what might we create with this fact? By "play" I am in no way suggesting we take a light approach to dying or that we mandate any particular way of dying. There are mountains of sorrow that cannot move, and one way or another, we will all kneel there. Rather, I am asking that we make space—physical, psychic room, to allow life to play itself all the way out—so that rather than just getting out of the way, aging and dying can become a process of crescendo through to the end. We can't solve for death. I know some of you are working on this.

Meanwhile, we can—we can design towards it. If we love such moments ferociously, then maybe we can learn to live well—not in spite of death, but because of it. Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination. SOURCE