President Trump’s supporters and detractors agree on something: He is an extraordinary human. In spite of intense pressure to stop providing his personal thoughts and feelings to a universal audience, he maintains his license to do so. He’s shown the world that he can scoot by limits, barriers and obstacles. And he perpetually creates the feelings that go with being on a pinnacle or turning point: they include hope, relief, distress and alarm. None of this is an accident. It comes from a lifetime of honing his passion into a force to be reckoned with.
The Donald has the full spectrum of attributes that come from being governed by passion:
He has a delicate, intuitive sense and powerful, uncontrollable emotions. He appears to instinctively avoid that which is passionless because it’s empty and meaningless to him. Basically, if he doesn’t feel for it, he doesn’t care about it. When you’re observing him, you sense that he’s riding something that’s bigger and more powerful than him. He gravitates towards drama and volatility. At times, you notice that he seems almost blinded by his passion; he can’t get a perspective on the situation. He even dips into chaos at times, without any apparent dislike for the feeling of everything being wild and crazy. In other words, President Trump has a core of finely tuned passion plus rough and tumble passion.
He seeks out and maintains experiences that feed his passion. They fall into three categories: pursuit, vindication and attention. You could say he has three passions. Now, this is atypical. The average human who is governed by passion probably has only one passion.
Attention:
Historically, there have always been people who seek high importance and visibility. A person can fulfill a passion for attention as a member of royalty, by holding public office, obtaining acclaim as a performer or being the subject of a scandal. But it’s also possible to catch interest simply by doing outrageous things, being totally unpredictable, or highlighting the preposterous.
The individual with a passion for attention seeks to be treated like visiting royalty or the star of the show. The goal is undivided attention and others making it their job to please him. He will often be told he’s high maintenance, but that is no deterrent. He passionately wants others to knock themselves out trying to meet his needs, ever hoping for admirers or detractors who get caught up in his internal drama. Either way, with positive or negative attention, he maintains the spotlight as an interesting, entertaining, infuriating, or riveting person.
The bottom line is that someone with a passion for attention wants to be viewed as extraordinary. To ensure that he is never seen as average, he will aim for being excessive and overdone. His worst fear is being invisible.
Pursuit:
This is traditionally the passion of the court fool, who could have been a philosopher, poet, minstrel or jester. Typically, fools were able to see what was not obvious to most people and they would present their thoughts to amuse the members of the court and to make them stop and think. Often, they enjoyed freedom of speech, but they risked torture and death if they offended a power-mad patron.
The individual with a passion for pursuit ignores negative feedback because he has the inkling that he should just put blinders on and plow forward. He can be seen as a fool for doing that, but he has confidence in the dynamic of pursuit. He marches to his own drummer, single-mindedly following his gut. Although it may be amazing and incredible to others, he may succeed in his initiatives because his passion just might be a valid guide.
Usually, the worst part of having a passion for pursuit is that he can be misunderstood. He may appear tuned-out and people might laugh at him. But, he just plods forward; he’s constantly in the process of stripping down the reality in front of him to make it into something he can work with. He remains tapped-into his passion in the hopes that he can inspire others to jump on the bandwagon with him.
Vindication:
Someone who feels outrage over being disenfranchised may develop a plan to be restored, using fair means or foul. Remember Mordred from the musical ‘Camelot’; it was about the mythical medieval kingdom of King Arthur. Mordred was Arthur’s illegitimate son who came to destroy his father and the round table hoping to take the throne. In the process, he set up Queen Guinevere and the Knight Lancelot to be caught together in a tryst, committing treason against Arthur. As almost everyone hoped Lancelot would save Guinevere from being burned at the stake, Mordred mocked Arthur: ‘Let her die, your life is over. Let her live, your life’s a fraud. Kill the Queen or kill the law.’ This is Mordred’s moment; his outrage is quelled. He tied his father up in a knot and in effect proclaimed personal victory over him.
The person focused on vindication has a strong feeling of being entitled to something that feels perfect and amazing to him, as if it is his birthright. He typically feels acutely disappointed and becomes furiously rebellious when something goes wrong and he loses his trophy. He fears the spell has been broken and can’t be re-established. He feels he has to make it absolutely clear that he deserves better than that. And he becomes desperate to eliminate the feelings of being lost and shattered.
As a means of coping, this individual tends to be vigilant, watching to see if he’s being misunderstood, overlooked, sidelined or ignored. He’s sensitive to anything and everything that goes awry. But he is also highly attuned to what could work in his favor and give him a windfall; something he could capitalize on and achieve his perfect state of vindication.
The Donald is by all accounts an extraordinary human. Passion rules, feeds and directs him.
