“I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout — pale, white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots, they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the backwards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself.”
Carl Rogers (1980)
https://www.drmitchkeil.com/post/carl-rogers-and-potatoes/
We all are a little "warped." Our potato selves have strange sprouts. From my perspective, those sprouts are actually magnificent. They are a manifestation of the sacred Life-drive.
Carl Rogers wrote about giving clients the right conditions for optimal growth; specifically unconditional positive regard. I try to give that to clients; honoring them and their "sprouts," not judging, clipping or re-arranging. I trust that sacred Life-drive.
