Importance

I recently wrote an essay about importance and about how art portrays certain things, people, places, and ideas as important. But I'm not sure there is an objective measurement of "importance." In fact I think that things are only important if they're important to someone.

For example, Rocket League isn't important. It's a computer game where rocket-powered cars play soccer. It's a simple game with a silly premise. It's also an E-Sport. There are tournaments. There's prize money. There are sponsorship deals. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of professional Rocket League players. And because it's their main source of income, Rocket League is very important to them.

The same thing could be said for anything that most people consider unimportant. There are people to whom that thing is one of the most important things in the world. Of course, the inverse is also true. There are things that are important to most people, but that aren't important at all to others. Many people consider religion infinitely, eternally important, and other people just don't bother with it. It may not be accurate to say that something is or is not important. I may be more accurate to say that something is more or less important to someone.

But what if that "someone" is God? There are things that God considers important, and He can make those things important to other people, too, assuming they care at all about their eternal destiny. For example, I don't really care about coffee, one way or the other, but it's important to God that I don't drink it, so I don't. Does that make not drinking coffee objectively important? I don't know. Maybe. Our eternal destinies seem pretty important. If God doomed to eternal damnation anyone who ties their shoes the wrong way, then it would suddenly become very important how one ties their shoes.

So, I would guess that importance is subjective, based on what is important to whom, except in the far more consequential case of what is and is not important to God.