As a wave of looming proportions hits

. . . the outer perimetre of our minds and cascades into our everyday lives, we face an onslaught of information. Like every big wave that hits us when we carefully swim out to face them, we brace and then either dive under them, or get tumbled by them.

This is not that kind of wave.

This kind of wave . . . you don't got looking for, and you certainly do not swim out to greet it. Instead, you climb as high as you can to escape its reach, and you barely have time to extend a hand to someone else, before its too late.

It is that kind of wave.

It is a wave of consciousness and it is difficult to define or express into words. It hits the physical body first and everything that you can think of in terms of physicality, in all its forms and expressions, is targeted, pulled, pressed, punched and knocked around. It hits the emotional body even harder, as you fight your emotions that are all happening at once, and the rage inside you threatens the inner coward, your kindness tries to take control of your fear, whilst your bravado wants to take up arms and attack anything that comes into view. You fight to stay alive amongst these swarming emotions and it all feels like it is too much for you to handle.

They are overwhelming.

Then your mental body is slammed with a thousands mirrored shards and the you, that you thought you were; planning the comfortable life, the well earned peace, and the easy going flow into old age, is thrown against rocks and obliterated. Your spiritual body . . . well that is another thing altogether . . . you cannot seem to find it.

The three layers, that you had always leaned upon in times of crisis, are like the bottom levels of a high rise building and the tsunami is cleaning out all of them and some of the fourth one. That is how high it will reach as the waters purge and carry away the skeletons of waste that litter the horizon.

You reach the building and feel a new sense of hope, that at least you were not carried away when you turned your back on the distant skyline, and you have the strength to find that staircase. The elevator is broken and your effort is paramount to your success. Obstacles lie in your path on the ground floor and all the tension and stress in your body is making you ache all over. If you push through and dont stop, you find the stairs and climb over other people scrambling for the top, and you may take a moment to help an old man who has tripped . . . or you may not . . . and you reach the second level.

Fire rages as it escapes a burning office and the whole world feels as if it is on fire, as your skin heats up and your emotions reach boiling point. There is no one to be angry with, no one to rage against because you are not the only one that is trying to escape and live again. It is useless to throw mud in a place like this as the looming wall of water pushes up towards the cities. You take a few steps up the staircase and you see that some part of it is already compromised, and your thoughts scream with panic and a sense of urgency.

Not before this moment did you value your life and what it was to breathe, as the fumes and smoke push into your lungs with heated air. You forget the sun tanning on the beach and the ridiculous amounts of suntan lotion that you used, while you thought that the beach was for your pleasure alone. But beaches have a secret . . . they observe the flow of bodies, emotions and thoughts that move over them and they remember.

They call the waves.

If you are fortunate enough to jump over the gaping hole in the staircase, you leap the last few stairs to the third level, and there is sense of relief that you left all those people behind and saved yourself. You have made it and you have overcome your physical limitations, your rampant emotions, and all you have to do is mange your thoughts and you could reach the fourth level. You head for the stairs only to find that they are sealed behind a solid door that is locked . . . with a key . . . that someone else has.

The fourth level - the safe level - that will be cleaned but not destroyed, is behind a closed door and you have no way of opening it. Someone shouts out from the balconey, themselves ready to give up, that the old man on bottom stairs is the caretaker who has the key.

It is here that any reader is left to make up their mind what they did as they followed this story . . . did you take one moment to help him or did you step over him as you ascended the stairs?

Only you know.

Sometimes the people we step on to climb to the top are the very people that can open the door that we need. It may not be who they are or what they can do, but what you did when you were with them, and how you acted in that moment . . .

. . . that is the key.