At first you don’t really notice the water around your feet. It gradually starts to cover your legs and passes your waist. It just feels a bit cool and you can still manage to move around, albeit with more effort. The sky starts to close in and you can feel the clouds getting darker. You miss the days when the sun would warm your face and flow energy throughout your body.
You can’t put your finger on it, but it feels like everything around you is adding to the water that now passes your neck. It is time to tread water to stay above the water.
Strangers and people you know seem to be effortlessly walking on the air around you. Some wave and you do your best to respond back while at the same time trying to keep your head above the water. Some people drop pebbles in to your backpack, while others seem to add bricks. As the extra weight gets added, you do your best to keep up and stay above the water. It is tough to focus on life around as you keep your eyes on the water’s depth.
Each new pebble starts to feel like a brick, and each brick like a boulder. Most of the people adding to your load, don’t realize the weight that is being added. They just assume that you like treading water and are an Olympic swimmer. After all, what is one more rock? Others really don’t care what impact they have on you and are oblivious to what they add to your backpack.
Each additional stroke feels like a marathon’s finish line that keeps moving as you approach the end. You don’t know if you can make it but you keep going….until you simply can’t. Your muscles ache, and while they don’t want to give up, they welcome the stillness. You take one last breath and then slip into the calmness that is around you.
There are millions like ‘you’ all around you, but you never notice.