The most inspiring thing I've ever read was a snippet of fiction, and I can't even remember it wholly.
"And the older ones began to tell the children about the Afterglow, a brief moment after the birth of the universe when matter was still gathered so close that it pressed with it's own weight, and burned with the heat of nuclear fire." Imagine a time so far from now that the stars are legends. Imagine a single being living so long that it could tell children of a time so close to the birth of the universe that the shock of it still reverberated in the sky as microwaves. That's immortality. That's what we are meant to be. Poetry that outlives the stars.