I’m working on a paper on Carl Rogers, one of the most influential American psychologists. It’s funny to learn that Rogers lived in La Jolla and passed away in 1987, while we were also living in La Jolla, but I don’t remember ever reading about his death. I guess I was too obsessed with the other famous neighbor that lived in La Jolla, none other than Dr. Seuss himself! Actually Carl Rogers and Dr. Seuss probably knew each other. It was probably me that wasn't in the loop, or the in-crowd with high society La Jolla. But, soon enough, I’ll be an expert on Dr. Rogers too (in addition to my wealth of Seussian knowledge).
“I believe it will become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times.
But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful.
This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. It involves the courage to be.
It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting things about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming. -Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person
