When he was helping someone to die, BJ Miller did not necessarily discuss existential philosophy with them, he baked cookies with them instead.
Or the palliative care doctor and triple amputee might give them a book of Mark Rothko paintings to contemplate.
Largely bright, blurred fields of floating colour, Rothko's abstract paintings are known for their luminosity and symbolism. They are, the artist once said, "an unknown adventure in an unknown space".
Ironically perhaps, the more abstract his work became, the more, Rothko said, they could create "clarity" and a connection between the artwork and the observer.
Similarly, Miller believed, that by stripping back to bare simplicity - like baking cookies or looking at art - that greater clarity and connection could be made. It was in seeming nonsense that sense might or might not be made, but where connection could.
Much is made of meaning and its importance in our lives. Researchers believe that a sense of meaning is more important to our health and wellbeing than happiness and even acts as an antidote to stress and loneliness.
But, it was not meaning that made the difference to Miller as he lay in a hospital bed, in 1990, with three singed limbs soon to be amputated. (Miller was electrocuted from the powerline of the commuter train he climbed on while mucking around with mates.)
Rather it was a ball of snow, "smuggled" into the Princeton University student by a nurse.
"It was stunning. What a simple little thing," Miller, who originally told the story in a 2015 TED talk seen by more than five million, recounted in a recent interview with Tim Ferriss.
"Just watching it melt - watching the snow become water - the simple miracle of it, was just a stunner for me.
"It really made it made it so palpable for me that, we as human beings, as long as we're in this body are feeling machines... if our senses are choked off, we are choked off. It was the most therapeutic moment.
He continued: "The implied, inherent perspective that it helped me make - that everything changes. Snow becomes water, it's beautiful because it changes, things are fleeting and it just felt so beautiful to be part of this weird world in that moment. I just felt part of the world again rather than removed from it."
This moment and the joy it brought him would transform the perspective of Miller, who tells New York Times in a new interview: "It has been a liberation to realise you can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left."
The 45-year-old doesn't discount the importance of meaning.
"Humans are meaning-making machines," Miller told Tim Ferriss recently, adding "It's a profound impulse and a lot of good comes from it."
But, he believes many of us tend to discount the importance of meaninglessness.
"The small things ain't so small actually," he said.
"The smell of fresh bread, or for most of us, the smell of a chocolate chip cookie does magical things. First of all food is primal... there is also the basic joy from smelling a cookie - it smells frigging great - and it's like the snowball... I am rewarded for being alive and for being in the moment. Smelling the cookie not on behalf of some future state, it's great in the moment by itself on behalf of nothing."
As is looking at beautiful art, abstract art that makes us feel but does not necessarily tell us a story or attempt to provide meaning.
"Art - part of its poignancy - and music and dance - is its purposelessness and just delighting in the whacky fact of perhaps a meaningless universe and how remarkable that is... to prize those little moments," Miller said.
Miller's mission has become, as he tells the New York Times, to humanise and "de-pathologize death", but also to encourage people to ponder the beauty of purposelessness.
"I also increasingly want to carve out a space for meaninglessness, purposelessness," he told Ferriss. "Anything that makes us feel, in our bones, happy to be alive in that moment on behalf of nothing else but that moment.
"I think we could all benefit from letting ourselves delight in things that don't necessarily have any meaning that just feel good - that don't hurt anybody else - to just give ourselves the space to delight in purposelessness. Just smelling a cookie.
"It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be a means to an end."
The beauty of purposelessness
"Whenever you undertake an activity solely for itself - when, that is, it's inherently pleasurable for you - it can be seen as purposeless," explains Leon Seltzer, a clinical psychologist and author of Evolution of the Self. "Because it's not embarked upon to receive others' recognition, or accomplish any preset goal, it's literally pointless. From a utilitarian perspective, it's counter-productive; useless. It simply makes you feel good."
Purposeless behaviour can have surprising benefits for our health. Savouring life's pleasures simply for what they are has helped Miller to put "neurotic anxieties" in their rightful place, while research has found that immersing in the sensation of the moment helps to relieve stress, lower blood pressure, improve sleep and digestion.
In their book, Pathways to Pleasure: The Consciousness and Chemistry of Optimal Living, Harvey Milkman and Stanley Sunderwit say there are four dimensions of purposeless behaviour:
• Physical Expression, which includes athletic prowess and challenging nature;
• Self-Focus, which encompasses physical fitness, sensuality, soothing sensations, and material comforts;
• Aesthetic Discovery, which takes in artistic seeking, adventure, experiencing nature, domestic involvement, reflective relaxation, and stimulation; and
• Collective Harmony, which combines the factors of mental exercise, people closeness, religious involvement, and altruistic interests.
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