A significant amount of people are so caught up in their lives, that they believe that all that they are is contained within their physical sphere and resides nowhere else. A belief such as that would essentially mean that life has no meaning, since nothing that is physical, no matter what games are played, can be sustainable in perpetuity. Not only that, but we read in Holy Scripture from our Messiah: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Matthew 24; 35). Clearly, that passage, indicates that there is a dimension that is not only beyond time and space, but is eternal, of which, the most appropriate understanding of this, is that the greatest good that any of us can do at any particular time, is to devote ourselves exclusively to those things that are eternal, as contrasted, to those things which are temporary, though some of these things may appear to be exceeding long in time to us, and/or seem of real value.
This should not be taken to mean that the advancement of mankind has little or no purpose or value, so that each of us, should therefore in lieu of doing the actual laboring of work, simply sit in quiet contemplation, each and every day; but rather to give us the appropriate perspective as to what really matters. For what matters is our relationship one to another, that is to say, how we treat each other, what we do for one another, and the wisdom and good advice that we impart to one another. This does mean that a dog-eat-dog world is fundamentally flawed, so too is a world that demands an eye-for-an-eye, for these worlds are not progressive but regressive. Indeed, if we are unable to get along and work together productively here on earth, than there isn't any good reason, why any other dimension should therefore become for us a dimension of peace and harmony, as if in the dying of our physical body, somehow brings us into an eternal Paradise.
In point of fact, those that aren't ready for Heaven, so to speak, while they are here on earth, are going to be precluded from reaching the dimension of utter peace and harmony, because they are not those very attributes, themselves. On the other hand, those that live their life in a way in which they see their neighbor as their own self, and their characteristics contain such as joy, peace, goodness, integrity, and steadfastness, have by their very deeds open up the portal of fulfillment in the eternal dimension which they have manifested in their lives here on earth.
The things that pass away are not us, and never will be us. On the other hand, all that we do to better ourselves as well as to better our fellow sojourners are the very things that pass on from person to person and from generation to generation, for they do not ever come to an end, for our consciousness has no ending to it, though its form and shape may change as the dimension that we exist in, changes. Therefore, what we do, what we say, and what we become, is who we really are, of which, to be truly eternal, we must be totally One with the Eternal, and this life on earth is for the very purpose of being tested in the crucible of Truth, and thereby burning off all the dross, that distorts the very thing that matters, which is our eternal bond to God.