Take five minutes today - or, if it's too late today, first thing tomorrow morning - to sit and appreciate that wonder of being alive: the wonder of each passing sound, the wonder of the highly complex processes involved in simply breathing in and out. The more you sit and experience the moment, the more you will realize that, in just this moment, all is well.

And that is all you need to know.

A little light relief never goes astray. Today's observation is, probably, more cultural than anything else and, for what it's worth, it reconfirms the widely held believe that, for all their negativity, the French really are a nation of would-be lovers...

Our youngest daughter... God help us she'll be twenty in a couple of weeks' time - is working checkout at a local supermarket over the holidays. And, yes, you've guessed it, she is doing her level best to provide me with a year's supply of "Normal People" stories... but that's not what I want to talk about today!

I'm intrigued with extent to which men of all ages tell her how beautiful she is - over a family-pack of Coca Cola, a few spare ribs or a bag of potatoes! She is constantly being told that she has beautiful eyes, how she has a lovely smile or, simply, that she is "si belle!"

Now, I'm from Dublin and I simply cannot imagine someone sitting at the checkout in Tesco taking that from a lad from the Northside... not only would the guy not have the balls to say something like that in the first place, if he did, he'd leave the shop with more than a trolly-load of groceries!

The demons within... I've yet to meet someone who doesn't mention the fact that they've demons: some describe them as "the little voice in my head", others "the noise in my head", still others actually put a name on the voice. We all have them - we'd be liars if we didn't admit it and, whilst some people's demons are big, scary and hairy, even the little shrinking violets that only whisper every-so-often still do their damage.

When it comes to getting anything worth getting out of life, the noise in our heads puts us at a huge disadvantage: first of all, it tells us who we are, who we are not, what we can do and what we daren't dream of. Secondly, it divorces from reality and all its opportunities - the reality that is before our very eyes but invisible to those who are looking at the reruns of the old movies that are rattling around in our heads.

Sure enough, the suicidal present us with a stark extreme of the demons within - but it's an extreme along a continuum on which we all find ourselves: from the suicidal through the depressed to the anxious and pissed off - to those who simply cannot galvinize themselves into doing the bleeding obvious to get them out of the cycle in which they find themselves.

I would be far from being alone in suggesting that depression - in all its forms - is not an illness but a state of mind. We are all in a state and, ninety nine times out of a hundred, we are not in the state we should be in. The way we're built, our mind runs on autopilot - you've heard me mention it often enough. To ensure that we can run on autopilot, we have a whole reference library that enables us get through the day. We learned that reference library as we go through life but the stuff that really matters - that gives us our sense of self - was learned when we were young and impressionable. And it is from these subconscious depths that the imaginery demons rise.

Our demons only have the power that we are prepared to give them. By default, we feed them every day - because our autopilot doesn't have the space or time to evaluate the stupidity of the extent to which we make sense of today by reference to our past. As far as the autopilot is concerned, leaving well enough alone will enable us get through the day. But the question must be asked... is that what you want? Is it enough? Were you not put on this earth for some even slightly greater purpose?

If you want to get even a little more out of life - even if that's only(!) peace of mind - then you need to starve your demons. Don't feed the beast. Instead, take a little time each morning to pay attention to the reality of the here and now. Spending a few such moments every morning is like first of all planting and, then, watering a seed... and great oaks from little acorns grow.