408. Swimming vs drowning

Swimming in pure turquoise waters full of brightly coloured fish which  the sound of your own breathing the only noise. It is beautiful and peaceful down here. If you turn your head and look up you see the most wonderful sight of a million tiny specks of sunlight, millions of stars shimmering on the surface of the water up there and blue everywhere. You don't want to go up. 

Next thing you know the blue is gone. There are no bright colours. No shimmering lights. You are in a room full of people. The blue has gone. Everyone in this room is chatting loudly. Rows and rows of people sitting on chairs talking to each other - not even bothering to lower their voices. At the top of the hall, there is a row of 6 people up on a makeshift stage, each with a small plastic bottle of water in front of them. And next to the bottle there is a microphone. 6 people. 6 bottles. 6 microphones. And these six people take it in turn to speak in the microphone in from of them. Your mind is confused. It seems the aim of the people on the stage is to cover the voices of the people on the room. 

You fidget on your chair and look around. People chatting, people dozing, people paying games on their phones, or reading the news, or texting ... Others leaving the room for a coffee, a cigarette, ...

After a while you realise that this is just an other kind of reality. And you are stuck in this one, you cannot decide to resurface and feel the sun on your skin. You can't leave and lie down on the black sparkly sand. You can hear the clanking of the prison door shutting, the clicking of the shackles closing in on your wrists. You want to stand up and scream.

'Hey! You down there! Stop talking and listen! And you up there, stop talking, no one is listening to you!'

And then you grab one of the mikes.

'Here are your folders, here are your timetables, come and get them and then go and do whatever it is you have to go before the kids get here!'

Easy. Sorted. You can go dreaming that you are still swimming with the multicoloured fish.