better he till his soil, think of what to grow, where to plant the fruit trees.  However small that area of freedom, attention and devotion may expand it to occupy the whole of life" (31). I love that.  So often we look over the fence to what other people "have" and spend our days coveting. (Watching lots of TV doesn't help -- coveting is at the heart of advertising.)  But better, he says, to till our own soil, plant fruit trees and focus on the gifts we've already been given.  So many of us (and I have fallen victim to this too), want to change the world and find our happiness in pursuits that are simply beyond us.  But what if our happiness was closer to home than we think?  What if we just learned to be awesome at 1 metre of influence around us?  It need not end there; but too often I think we look over the neighbour's fence before the mirror. Happiness also has to do with meaning.  If our lives don't have a sense of meaning or overarching purpose, it's going to be hard to be happy.  The affluence of our society hasn't fixed this.  In fact, too much money often breeds misery.  Didn't Jesus have something to say about it being hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God? (Matthew 19:24)  At any rate, at the heart of contentedness is finding your purpose in God.  As it says in Proverbs 16:20: "Those