Reflections on Significance

Trying to figure out what possible good can come from sickness, namely 8 weeks of asthma in an otherwise perfectly healthy 31 year old male, has been one of the things I have been thinking about while I have been laying low.  I tried thinking is there something the universe if trying to teach me?  I don’t have a positive answer to that other than it has given me time today to contemplate significance.  Ever since neighbor said that is what motivates men, I have been thinking about how many of my actions are motivated by the need to feel significant.  Lots, if not nearly all.  I am a big old significance chaser.  Doesn’t sound that good to say it.  But in my search for other meanings for existence, I haven’t really come up with a replacement.  Significance was the drug of choice in my family.  In a family where you weren’t allowed to have sex before marriage, get drunk, do drugs or be lazy or ostentatious, being good at something, and being known for being good at something was the only allowable form of self expression or elitism.   If you were a doctor you were supposed to be the best in your field.  If you were a builder you were supposed to be insanely successful and rich because of it.  If you were a farmer, you were supposed to make huge amounts of money and own huge tracks of land and produce the best wool and beef in NSW.  I got this idea and attitude from both parents and one set of grandparents, and I even think that this need for significance is what former bestie and me’s friendship was about, this need to be good at something, and be known for being good at stuff.

I tried monitoring myself today and every time I had a thought or motivation I checked to see if it was a desire to be significant.  Most of them were.   Sex is a funny one, because sex with hot guys is fun in itself, but if I have a need for other people to know about it then, that’s a need for significance.   “Look at me, look who I can attract as a sex partner.”  A nice house, with a good harbor view, well I would like to have that view because it’s nice to look at, and a nice home so I can give my friends a place to stay and have cool parties in.  A part of it is significance, but only part, the others are just fun.  Same with a nice car, they are fun to drive; only a small part of it for me is what I think of myself or what others think of me because of it.

But when it comes to a hot body, being good looking and a career, they are nearly all significance driven for me.  What I do for work, is a huge one for me, I need to feel as though I am important.  Having a body that is hotter than just about anybody else’s, is also important to me.  I am so far from both of these, it isn’t funny.

This need for significance sounds silly, but I am beginning to think it is part of being human; I think it is part of the life force.  Without it would be just live in mud huts and scavenge for food in animal skin clothes?  Is significance what pushes us to improve as humans?