MY dad was once asked to choose between two things on a table. He chose one. That’s why I’m here typing this article. If he had chosen the other I would never have been born, and you would not have had the pleasure of reading this article. He chose the small dark loaf of bread.

The alternative was to choose a gun. The gun, unlike the bread, would not have been given to him. It was to be used on him, and this was explained to him before he made the choice.

Well, who wouldn’t have chosen the bread, especially if you were in such a state of malnutrition that you could almost put your hand round your thigh and touch finger to thumb?

But he lost honour in the process, a humiliating defeat against the enemy. For the man offering the choice on the other side of the table was a KGB officer (then called the NKVD). In order to get the bread my father had to agree to do anything the Soviet Union asked of him for the rest of his life. This was Dad’s Room 101 moment, the Orwellian process made to break a person.

Dad reasoned afterwards that what was agreed under duress had no real status, but he knew that at any time in his life there could be a phone call or a knock on the door. Fortunately he died age 90 without ever having to face such a situation.

Mindfulness asks us to be aware of what is going on moment by moment. In my father’s scenario, it was literally a choice of life (conditional on submission and defeat) or death (with honour for standing against the enemy).

What matters in any given situation depends on the circumstances of the moment, but for most people most of the time, survival comes first. To survive we need air, so breathing matters. We need water, clean water, so drinking water matters. And we need food, so eating matters.

To live using only these things is the classic scenario of a hermit in Hindu or Buddhist lore, also of St Francis of Assisi, and others from various religious or philosophical schools. I’ve never attempted anything like that, but I did spend two weeks in solitude and total silence in 2004 as part of a month-long process of becoming a teacher, initially in a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I had no books, music, radio, TV, news, or pen or paper. What I discovered was that it is not only possible to be happy with just food, water, clothing and shelter but that it is in fact incredibly peaceful.

With mindfulness we can take this realisation, that we actually require very little in life, and use it deliberately to feel happy, calm, peaceful and fulfilled with the tiniest amount of things. It is the classic antidote to materialism, consumer impulses, and the often pointless hectic pace of life at which we blindly blunder through our days.

So some times in the day, preferably before you’ve worn yourself out, just stop and notice the vital signs that you’re alive. The fact that you’re thinking that fact is a sign. Notice that you can think. Feeling your feet on the floor, legs and back on the chair, air touching the skin on your hands and face, the cotton of your clothing on your shoulders and arms. Doing these things is inherently calming. It also in time makes you feel appreciative that you’re alive and can experience these things. It de-stresses you and it takes nothing but a couple of minutes of your attention.

Or notice your breath, the most vital substance from outside our body that we need to stay alive. An in-breath, at the tips of the nostrils, is fresh, vibrant, even quite sharp to our mind. The out-breath in contrast is softer, more gentle and peaceful. Paying attention, especially a very light but clear attention, to the breath can bring to your mind that sense of being alert that the in-breath feels like, alongside the peaceful sense that an out-breath has. You can magnify the effect using words to yourself: Breathing in, my mind feels clear and alert; breathing out my mind is still, calm.

When you drink water – or coffee or tea but pure clear cold water is best as a mindfulness practice – feel the coolness of the water through the glass or cup on your fingertips, and enjoy it. Just bring awareness of the very fact that you experience that sensation of coolness of touch. It’s actually an astonishing feat of evolution over millions of years. Just note it.

Then feel the water on your lips; again, its coolness, and the pleasant feeling that sensation registers in your mind. Then in your mouth, cold and refreshing, it lubricates the dryness of the mouth, cooling down its temperature.

When you eat, first notice that you have food available to you. If you are religious it is healthy to say Grace, to thank the entity you believe created everything including this bread and the opportunity for you to eat it. If atheist, just bring gratitude and appreciation to heart. And for all, perhaps put a little bit of your food to the side to eat at the very end, and imagine you have set it aside for one who has no food and needs it.

Happiness in being alive, peace in breathing, appreciation in water, and gratitude in the beauty of food on a plate. What more does a human being really need? My father broke his bread and shared it with his dying mother and his sisters.