Bishop Fulton J. Sheen stated on his long running television program, Life is worth Living that "hell is voluntary failure." You really can't put it better than that, though many simply see hell as a place for those that have committed sins of omission or sins of commission, or as a place for those that have not personally taken Christ as their savior, but in actuality it really comes down to the fact that to find yourself in hell, you have had to have voluntarily failed in your duties as a human being, that more than anything is apropos of why hell exists.
Too many people, have rather simplistic views of the afterlife, which fits in well with their demeanor, as they believe or purport to believe, that whether you get to heaven or go to hell, comes down to essentially whether or not you have politely requested God's grace, which as fundamentally bad as that doctrine is, is made even worse, by stipulating that the positive acts that you have accomplished won't make any difference in regards to your afterlife, but in actuality, that is exactly the opposite of what really occurs.
In point of fact, belief without actions is the same as non-belief, it is therefore your actions in your everyday interactions with your fellow brothers and sisters, as well as the challenges and dilemmas that you have inevitably come across day-by-day that define who and what you really are, for you are tested over and over again, to prove thereby your worth or non-worth, for life on earth is the proving ground and there are no shortcuts here, for anyone.
This then means for a certainty, that the decisions that you make: matter. Further to the point, all are gifted with a conscience, free will, and the innate ability to discern right from wrong, so that at the end of the day, no matter how things have turned out, those decisions and those actions have come from ourselves, which is why those that complain or moan that their life is a life of misery because of this or that, or because of this person or that, or from lack of this or that, which while having some validity in what they are saying, must so recognize that it isn't so much where or what you have or don't have that bears its marks, it is what you do with the circumstances that you have been given to work with to begin with, for membership in heaven is free to all, if they are willing to put forth the effort to gain admission to it.
If you will not exert yourself positively for anything of worth, you will fail. If you will not try to heal yourself as well as to try to be of benefit to others, you have failed. If you live entirely to yourself, thinking just of yourself, playing games to benefit solely yourself, your failure is complete. The bottom line is that If the test of your character was solely about yourself and none other, than earth would just be a place with just one soul, your own; so then, you must recognize that the whole reason why there are so many people on earth, such diversity and divisiveness on this planet, is to give one another a chance, to piece everythingback together again and to thereby make this world better for you having been a member of it, for in this endeavor, you will find success, and for those that voluntarily turn their back on such, they will find that havingfailed themselves as well as others, a hell of their own making.