Living the Moment and Why I'd hate to be Donald Trump

I’ve always thought the happiest times of my life were lived in the moment. I’m fairly self-conscious now and painfully so when I was young. My first, absolute in the moment experience came as a lifeguard. The pool was crowded. The water reflected a summer sun streaming through windows that formed the walls that enclosed the pool. Two lifeguards patrolled the shallow end and one in the deep. About mid-afternoon, I spotted a man in his early twenties cradling a boy in his teens approaching my lifeguard chair. The boy looked dead. By the time the man reached poolside, I had jumped from my chair in order to meet him.

“My girlfriend kicked him on the bottom of the pool,” the man said and he indicated the young

The swimming pool with all the glass
  

woman following. That was the last I heard from him because I’d pulled the boy poolside and was attempting artificial respiration. Unfortunately, I met immediate resistance because his air passage was blocked.  So, I flipped him on his side and pounded his back between his shoulders until vomit spewed into the pool. I rolled him back and attempted A.R. again. I blew hard and whatever chunks were left in his throat flew into his stomach . . . or lungs. I adjusted his head tilt and continued AR. I knew immediately that my efforts were working because his lips became warm and colour began to return to his skin.

While I was administering A.R., the pool was cleared and the head guard retrieved an airbag which would have been nice if I had gotten a seal. So, I continued mouth-to-mouth. I asked the third lifeguard to take over but he took a hard pass. Then the ambulance arrived, the boy was intubated and taken away to the hospital. About a month later, the boy’s mom brought him back to the swimming pool to thank me. I wouldn’t have recognized him because he was wearing glasses and he looked well and . .  alive. His mom told me that no brain damage had been detected which made me feel good.

However, that’s not what I got out of the experience. Upon reflection, I’d discovered that, while I was working on the boy, I was totally in the moment. I wasn’t concerned about other people and their feelings or mine. I just wanted to save that boy, partly because I felt responsible for not spotting him on the bottom of the pool but, mostly, because I wanted to save him.

I sought that feeling of being in the moment through philosophy however with only limited success. I read the novels of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus and became interested in existentialism but that was too bleak. Then, on a trip to Japan, Korea and Taiwan, I became was attracted to Zen Buddhism which replaced the nothingness of existentialism with no-thought. But, it didn’t work. I was still, constantly questioning myself. Not, in the moment.

Philosophy and religion wasn’t completely the answer. Living in the moment also required putting

Me with my bike

myself in situations that forced me to live in the now.  When I met my wife, we were attending a University of Victoria graduate course on education in China in China. The year was 1984 and China had cut itself off from the world for almost 40 years. When I rode the bicycle I’d purchased from the Shanghai “Friendship Store,” I was the only white guy among thousands of Chinese who looked at me like I was an alien and I kinda felt like an alien. Except for a few who wanted to practice their English, I was largely ignored.

Tibet in 1986 was also mind blowing. People in robes prostrated themselves as they made their way

Drepung Temple

in a clockwise direction around the Drepung Temple, the most sacred temple for the Tibetan Buddhist. The people would stand, throw themselves forward, then stand and prostrate themselves again, a progress of sloth-like speed. In a square in front of the temple, women twirled prayer wheels and sold jewelry to pay for their sacred pilgrimage, a journey we’d done as a lark.

In my fourth year as a guidance counsellor in Slave Lake. I would return home for lunch every day I wasn’t on supervision. When I left for work at the end of the lunch hour, my three children would stand at the window and wave good-bye. On one of those days, I remember riding my bike back to work and all I could think was that there was nowhere I’d rather be. I was that content.

My kids beachcombing in Cuba

I would experience the same feeling when my children were older and we were on Christmas vacation in Cuba. I was standing on the beach watching combing for shells with my wife and all I could figure is “This is as good as it’s going to get.” I was completely content and completely in the moment.

More recently, my wife and I watched the sky turn an astonishing red while we sat in camp chairs on the beach by Jordan River on the B.C. coast. I could think of no other place I’d rather be.

Donald Trump must experience that living in the moment feeling standing in front of his adoring fans sharing any thought and theory that pops into his head. The emotional high must be tremendous. He must have experienced a similar during his years on “The

Sunset at Jordan River

Apprentice” and, before “The Apprentice,” purchasing hotels and planes with his name splashed over the side. And his tweets. He loves his tweets because he gets an immediate response from them. Then, he watches what his flunkies at Fox News have to say about him.

My father used to say that popularity is a form of begging. I would qualify that statement and say that the pursuit of popularity is a form of begging and I can’t imagine making the pursuit of popularity as a life goal because it’s completely dependent on the recognition of others.

With all his minions

Without it or the belief it exists, I would be miserable. Life between moments of adulation would feel empty.

Spirituality might be impossible because a feeling of connection with a being or force greater than myself requires reflection. If my sense of being depends on the recognition of others, how can there be greater being or force. It’s just me. I’m the force. I’m the being. Yet, if that’s not recognized, who am I? My existence would be agonizing. There would be no moments to cherish. No spiritual connection with something greater than myself. Just a sad, lonely, pathetic existence.

That’s how I see Donald Trump and that’s why I'd hate to be him.