Lifeguarding

While being trained as a lifeguard in the Boy Scouts, I learned a valuable principle when it comes to trying to rescue a drowning victim: if I simply swim to them unassisted with the intention of helping them swim back to safety, I will likely be killed. In their desperation to stay above water, the victim will try to use me as a floatation device, meaning they will push me under water with irresistible, super-human strength enabled by a panic induced shot of adrenalin and hold me there until I drown. Since panic also makes a victim irrational, no amount of reasoning as to my intentions or the need for their cooperation will prevent them from killing me. Since a dead person does not have sufficient buoyancy to keep the victim’s head above water, my dead body would not even keep the victim from drowning, meaning my well intentioned self-sacrifice would result in making casualties of us both. Therefore, I should do myself and the victim a service by considering my options before jumping in to save them. I have found this principle to be generally universal in its application.
Likewise, I have found the training I received that provides viable alternatives to self-destruction to also be generally universal in application. Based on the Boy Scout motto (Be Prepared!), I was first taught to create as controlled an environment as possible when planning waterfront activities by providing all the potentially necessary rescue tools and by posting plenty of qualified lifeguards who know how to use them. Also, I was taught to qualify activity participants by testing their ability to swim before allowing them to enter the water.

I was then trained to use rescue strategies based on the principles of Reach, Throw, Row ,Go. First, I learned I should not panic when I find myself a witness to an emergent need in which I have the opportunity to intervene. Instead, I should stop, breath, think, and look around to assess the environment and availability of resources to assist in the victim’s rescue. If they are within reach from the side of a pool, pier, or the shore, I should use a pole or something of the sort to extend to them so they can be pulled to safety. Should it be required to extend a hand or leg, I should secure the rest of my body to avoid being pulled in and to provide the needed leverage to pull the victim out. If the victim is too far to reach, I should look for a flotation device to throw to them with sufficient buoyancy to keep their head above water until they can be reached. If they are beyond throwing distance, I should look for a row boat or other equivalent means of transport that can cover the needed distance in time to reach the victim before they drown and can carry the victim as an added passenger back to safety. As a last resort, I should swim to the victim while carrying a floatation device that can be passed or thrown to them from a safe distance. If the victim should fail to grab the float or prefer to use me as a float, it may be necessary to hit them and/or render them unconscious in order to pacify them enough to enable my appropriate assistance. If all attempts fail, I should stay out of their reach until they drown with the hope of dragging them to safety in time to revive them using CPR.

As I consider possible interventions to help victims in East Lake, I am haunted by the parallel application of these principles and how counter intuitive they may be. As opposed to the controlled lake water environment in which I learned, I now feel as though I am working in the chaos of raging flood waters. There are scores of victims who have been swept up by the deadly currents who are gasping for breath as they cry out for help. I also feel as though there is no shore of safety to which I can deliver them. The river runs through a canyon with walls too high for them to climb though construction of a means to elevate them has begun. The conditions are not controlled so I have had to evaluate what resources are available. The most effective resource I have used is the one that saved me when I lost my life preserver, one that defies convention. It is all that I have had to extend for support and cannot be denied in its effectiveness.

Jumping into these waters also defies reason. The risks imposed by the water are substantial but I have not felt threatened by it given the effectiveness of my life support in dealing with the conditions. I have understood not all victims I tried to rescue would see my support or take what I offered due to the blindness of their hysterics and their unfamiliarity with the means of rescue. I have known I cannot knock sense into them nor could I render them unconscious. As a result, I have watched helplessly as victims drown due to their rejection of my offered assistance and my refusal to allow them to cling to me as their source of life. I remain convinced my body cannot offer them the salvation they need but the help I am offering them can. I have been affirmed in the self-awareness of my limitations when I have seen other well meaning but unqualified lifeguards who jumped into the water as rescuers but became victims themselves, overwhelmed by small groups of victims ineffectually clinging to them for life. All of them are drowning.

As I appraise the devastation I am also appraising my feelings toward the rescue effort. I am frustrated by the discontinuity of the operation. I question if I am even a part of the same effort as other lifeguards since we seem to be using conflicting methods and seem to answer to different leaders. Not many even recognize me as a lifeguard. I am angry with the multitudes of rescue trainees who never seem to graduate the program; many have not even left the shallow end of the pool. I am irritated by the wasted resources spent on responding to victims who cry for help from their homes settled high above the flood because they are afraid of drowning in the water in their pools. I am enraged by those who stand on the edge of the cliffs looking down with indifference or contempt for those who are not able to scale the walls of safety on which they now stand. Some say they don’t help because they are not called to swim and others don’t want to learn to swim because they hate water. They just watch and comment on the situation amongst themselves, like the crowds drawn to gawk at train wrecks.

Additionally, I am beginning to question if land is where I even belong or if it is where I should be trying to deliver victims to safety. I have a growing sense that eventually everyone is going to be swept into this torrential flood that is ever rising and all consuming, similar to the waters that once consumed everything but an ark and the refugees it carried. No one but whom God had equipped to escape the flood was able to survive it. I believe God is equipping his elect to survive this one as well. I’m thinking perhaps the water is really where I am supposed to live since the earth will not survive destruction this time. What if the point is not to try to stay alive by keeping my head or the heads of the victims above water or even to live above the water? I wonder if the reason I’m not afraid of it is because God is making me into something like a fish, able to breathe underwater. Fish are at home in water and the air so many are fighting to breath is becoming increasingly foreign to me. When I return to the surface, I’m not gasping for air. There are times it seems like I’m not holding my breath anymore underwater either. Since I was jerked from the water some time ago, I feel as though I’m suffocating and desperately want to be thrown back in. I’m wondering what it is now I was actually trying to save victims from since I’m now so out of place on land and saw so many swimming underwater with me before I was fished out.

Since I lost my life preserver, the fathoms into which I have been looking beckon me to come further. However, I can only go so far every time I explore before I am compelled back to the surface by the reminder of my purpose to assist victims and by the fact my transformation is not complete given my still present need for air. It seems only the lifeguards and the victims who have learned to let go of life preservers are undergoing the same life giving transformation as I am, equally enabled to navigate the depths that strike such fear in land lovers that they would destroy themselves and others to avoid sinking into them. Those who have let go also seem to be the only ones able to assist the others who are still drowning.

I also notice the cliffs are shrinking because the waters are rising as the rain keeps falling. I’m now more worried for the ones who are safe on dry land than I am for those trying to stay afloat in the water. Though the water is different than what consumed the earth before, the threat is just as real and the safe are just as oblivious. No one will escape the flood this time. They need to be warned lest they be swept under the water with no life preservers left and no way to breath. I can only pray they heed the warning this time, which is actually a call to join the rescue effort since there is no ark. The only way to escape this flood is to dive into it. The life so many are trying to preserve is not worth preserving since no one can float forever and everyone will have to eventually sink or swim.

I can also only pray new recruits that respond to the call have abandoned the counterproductive strategy of self-preservation as they jump into the water lest they become yet another victim that has to be coaxed to let go as they flail their arms in panicked hysteria. Knowing the source of life, how to preserve it and how to share it are essential prerequisites for becoming a lifeguard. Perhaps the training program needs to be modified so trainees are better prepared and better equipped for these conditions. Until then, experience can serve as an effective school if a new lifeguard is willing to learn and is willing to listen to seasoned lifeguards.

Seasoned lifeguards will be the first to admit they are still students themselves since no one graduates until retirement. They also know there is only one Master and they are exclusively under his leadership, following his orders. New lifeguards will not have to look hard to find seasoned lifeguards because they are easy to identify; they are the ones who are skillfully navigating the waters as they carry life to the victims. Their victims are also the ones being saved, and the ones who are becoming new lifeguards. That said, perhaps the land-based life guard academies need to also evaluate if their instructors and writers of their curriculum are still practicing as real lifeguards, if they ever were real lifeguards. God forbid the commentators on train wrecks, watching from their perches high on the cliffs, also be the ones who are writing manuals for how lifeguarding should be done and the ones who determine if new lifeguards are qualified. That would explain a lot. I have been so schooled. I’ve got to get back to the water.