How to Live Forever

The morning light illuminates golden-green pollen as it drifts through the sunbeams, nature’s own glitter suspended in air and tickling my nose, much like the scent of sweet perfume from the color-filled wildflowers that filter among the spring grasses, growing wildly out of control like a rumor at a small town diner. 

Here I sit comfortably on my long, covered Texas porch overlooking the distant hills as I spot a smattering of Indian paintbrush, LYF (little yellow flowers), and a couple of iridescent bluebonnets lending their fragrance to the breeze. 

A chorus of bees hum their industrious melody among stands of tall greenery, within earshot but thankfully not within reach. We recently made our way back from the warmth of Florida beaches and have now returned to the ideal spring climate, the comfortable perfect days before the oppressive Texas heat sets in. 

It’s good to be home, and just in time for Easter. Happy Easter to you!.

Solitude Embraced

Sundays offer a different quality of silence than other days. It’s a chosen quietude rather than an absence of sound imposed by circumstance. My phone remains face-down, notifications accumulating unheeded. There is luxury in this deliberate disconnection, this small rebellion against perpetual availability and the dopamine rush of being needed. Somehow I’ve managed to resist reading my social media for a full month. I feel like I’ve had a restful time away. Oh, if I could give it up entirely and still survive in business. 

Wisdom Distilled

As I cradle my mug, I ponder the strange headlines about scientists working to cheat death through 3D-printed organs and brain transfers. Immortality in a lab, they promise. And recently news that if you sit in a hyperbaric chamber every day for 60 days, you can gain the health and cognition you had 20 years ago. Maybe I could check my social media while in a hyperbaric chamber while getting red light therapy after swallowing my 30 daily vitamins to reverse my aging? Hmm … something more to do.

Do we really want to live forever? Or should we give others a chance at their turn on earth? 

Tales Transcend Time

My great-great-grandfather has now lived for about 270 years. He was a Tennessee sheriff with wisdom that outweighed his ammunition. Legend tells how he spotted a fugitive by a campfire, and, instead of rushing in with guns blazing like some dime-store novel hero, he removed his badge, approached unarmed, and said, “Howdy, stranger, can you spare a cup of coffee?” Over flames and conversation, he disarmed the man with interest rather than intimidation. Eventually, he admired the fugitive’s gun, held it in appreciation, and only then made his arrest. Five generations later, I sip my coffee and realize I know a man I’ve never met — his patience, his cunning, his humanity — all preserved not in formaldehyde but in family narrative. He lives on.

Legacy Through Osmosis

Scientists tout hyperbaric chambers promising 20 additional years, while I silently transmit centuries to my children without even trying. My father’s entrepreneurial confidence flows through me like genetic material, not because he lectured me on business principles, but because I witnessed his phone calls, his negotiations, his presence. “Dad College” had no tuition but paid dividends beyond calculation. Now my children roll their eyes at my intentional lessons but absorb my every interaction — how I speak to strangers, how I treat their mother, how I navigate disappointment. They’re downloading my operating system whether I acknowledge the file transfer or not. It’s how I’ll live on … like it or not.

Immortality’s Mirror

I wonder which of my expressions my daughter will unconsciously mirror at 40. Will she inherit my laugh or my scowl? My generosity or my occasional insanity? The thought sobers me faster than my caffeine. We chase longevity supplements and cryogenic preservation without realizing we’re already achieving a kind of immortality through behavioral inheritance. I’m embarrassed recalling the times I’ve complained about bad drivers or slow service with my children watching — those moments potentially echoing through generations like ripples in ancestral waters.

Deliberate Eternity

As I take the final sip of my now-cooled coffee, loaded with lion’s mane to prevent Alzheimer’s, cinnamon to reduce inflammation, and MCT oil to superpower my brain, I wonder if wisdom follows the same pattern — revealing deeper notes with time and perspective. 

The longevity movements focus on extending our individual timelines, but they miss that we’re already smeared across time like watercolors bleeding beyond their borders. My great-grandfather’s jovial nature and creative business skills were adopted into my father’s life through osmosis, then unknowingly transferred to me — a kind of immortality achieved not through science but through story and presence. 

Perhaps my artistic side comes from my mother’s Aunt Ruth, whose oil paintings hang in the homes of her descendants, skills and passion probably acquired from a generation or two before her.  Our mental DNA and behavior may have been passed down for hundreds of generations. We don’t need hyperbaric chambers to transcend our lifespans; we need mindfulness about which parts of ourselves we’re programming into the future.

Tomorrow’s Ancestors

Setting down my empty cup, I realize that today I am someone’s ancestor — perhaps someone not yet born but destined to know me through the stories my children will tell, through the habits they unconsciously absorbed when I thought they weren’t paying attention. The greatest form of immortality isn’t avoiding death but creating life worth remembering, worth emulating, worth passing down like cherished recipes or heirloom furniture. The bluebonnets beyond my window will wither by next week’s heat, but their seeds ensure next spring’s revival — just as our words and deeds plant themselves in generations we’ll never meet.

Wisdom Distilled

Perhaps the true path to immortality isn’t found in laboratories or hyperbaric chambers, but in the conscious cultivation of our legacy. Science may eventually print new organs or transfer consciousness to younger vessels, but it cannot manufacture meaning or transmit values. (Or can it?) 

Our immortality project began the moment we entered this world and will continue long after we leave it — carried forward in the mannerisms of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, in stories told around future fires, in approaches to problems solved with wisdom accumulated across centuries. We live forever not by escaping death but by embracing the profound responsibility of life fully lived in full view of those who will carry us forward. 

The most potent immortality isn’t measured in extended years but in extended influence — the invisible inheritance we leave that shapes worlds we’ll never see.

And what about the lives we touch, those we influence — who may change forever, then influence the outcomes of their future offspring?

The real question isn’t whether you’ll live forever. You will. The question is: What version of you deserves that kind of immortality?

Eric Rhoads