| I told
that the core birdbox experience was about not to dictate a person (student, client), but
to discover this person. By Roger's view the point is to accept.
- Behold! Here comes the gem quote for today: "There is another very important learning which has come to
me in my counseling work. I can voice this learning very briefly. I have found it highly
rewarding when I can accept another person.
I have found that truly to accept another
person and his feelings is by no means an easy thing, any more than is understanding. Can
I really permit another person to feel hostile towards me? Can I accept his anger as a
real and legitimate part of himself? Can I accept him when he views life and its problems
in a way quite different from mine? Can I accept him when he feels very positively toward
me, admiring me and wanting to model himself after me? All this is involved in acceptance,
and it does not come easy.
I believe that it is an increasingly
common pattern in our culture for each one of us to believe, "Every other person must
feel and think and believe the same as I do." We find it very hard to permit our
children or our parents or our spouses to feel differently than we do about particular
issues or problems. We cannot permit our clients or our students to differ from us or to
utilize their experiences in their own individual ways. On a national scale, we cannot
permit another nation to think or feel differently than we do.
Yet it has come to me that this
separateness of individuals, the right of each individual to utilize his experience in his
own way and to discover his own meanings in it, - this is one of the most priceless
potentialities of life. Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense, and
he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and
permitted to be himself.
So I find that when I can accept another
person, which means specifically accepting the feelings and attitudes and beliefs that he
has as a real and vital part of him, then I am assisting him to become a person: and there
seems to me great value in this." (pp.20.21) |
