We want, and fear, significance in Life

We want significance in our lives; but we fear it too. Significance implies that what we think, say and do have permanence and universality; but that clashes with a sinful desire that we can act without consequences, avoid responsibility.

The desire for significance also gets mixed-up with the desire for esteem, status, prestige - which lead to types of pleasurable feeling. Yet in wanting significance in our lives, we want an objective, solid, reality - not merely our personal feelings.

In essence, in wanting objective, solid significance; I think we want that potentially other people may always be able to know that which is important that we think or do.

We want other people to be able to find out and know what Good we did, for themselves - without relying on persuading them, or manipulating them in any way. (The modern brainwashing of celebrity status by the mass and social media and their false, dishonest, artificial virtuality does not suffice.)

Why should we want significance, rather than merely wanting pleasure for ourselves - here-and-now?

Ultimately, because of love. If we love, we want a shared world - that is an objective reality.

Heaven is the situation in which there is significance, permanence, universality; and Heaven is a place of love - and only of those who love.

Those who do not love, do not want significance, reality, objectivity, permanence; those who do not love want perpetual pleasure - regardless of what happened in the past. Hell is a subjective world, a world where My subjectivity - because My pleasure - is primary.

By contrast; a world of relationships, like Heaven, must be objective; and to want objectivity is to want significance.