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Quality of life is more important than material wealth. Curiously, when you work from that principle you end up gaining all the dream aspects that are often mistakenly thought to come with material wealth. What you get might be a little different from what you thought was important but you get more because you get things you hadn't realized were important.

It's very easy to look at what other people have and feel envious. But do they really have what they appear to have. Big houses, fancy cars and expensive life styles don't often go with peace of mind and deep and fulfilling relationships. Comparisons in this case is impossible because you cannot match like with like.

When you have a lot of valuable possessions you have to protect them. What are valuable possessions? We normally think of them as having cost a lot of money. But actually, the really precious things we have are the people we care about and who care for us. With that comes a sense of being at one with the natural world. Perhaps that sounds dangerously like new age ideas.

What is quality of life? It's being at peace, it's having time to enjoy what you like doing with people you like to be with, It's satisfying. It's time to see sunsets, feel the breeze on your skin as you go for a walk. Quality of life is made up of all those small things that the pursuit of material wealth ignores and loses sight of. And it's doable.

Material wealth appears to be able to do anything it wants, regardless of the laws of nature. But if you look at what the pursuit of material wealth has done to some areas of the world it is neither pretty or healthy. Some of the ugliest and most dangerous landscapes are created by humans in the hunt for riches. Yet if you work with the natural world there is less stress, less disharmony and it will work for you. Think of a compost heap. All the waste vegetable peelings, grass cuttings, trimmings from pruning go into it. It's a collection of stuff we don't want any longer. But given a little time and encouragement, we end up with a rich, friable soil ready to grow more plants. We have added nothing artificial yet we have been given something free.

From this soil we can grow vegetable which have taste and flavour. When our food comes from anywhere in the world, picked before it is ripe, it all tastes the same. There is none of the joy of tasting the first raspberry in early summer or a really ripe tomato.

Quality of life comes from being in cahoots with the seasonal nature of the earth. and valuing what appears to be insignificant but isn't.

Learn more about this author, Rosemary Redfern.
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