Logically, it follows that the possibility for self-confirmation exists
in any intersubjective situation. However, in everyday life this
self-confirmation is experienced to different degrees or on different
levels in interhuman relating. Since both persons are independent
subjects acting with their human capacity for disclosing or enclosing
themselves, there is no guarantee that the availability and presence
necessary for a genuine confirming encounter will come forth. Presence,
the gift of one's self, cannot be seized or called forth by demand, it
can only be given freely and be invoked or evoked.
Since man becomes more through his choices and the aim of nursing is to
help man toward well-being or more-being, the humanistic nursing effort
is directed toward increasing the possibilities of making responsible
choices. Such choice involves, in the first place, an openness to and an
awareness of one's own situation. A choice is a response to possibility.
Therefore, one must first recognize that possibilities or alternatives
exist. This openness to options is experienced as a freedom to choose as
well as a freedom from the bonds of habit and stereotyped response, from
routine, from the veils of the obvious. It means getting in touch with
one's experience, one's subjective-objective world. As one becomes more
acutely aware of his personal freedom of choice, there arises
concurrently an awareness of the quality of choice, of the
responsibility that is always implied in the freedom. Then follows
reflective consideration of one's unique situation with its possible
alternatives and an examination of the values inherent in them. Finally,
the act of choosing is expressed in a response to the situation with a
willingness to accept the responsibility for its foreseeable
consequences. Through this experience the person becomes aware of
himself as an individual. As a subject choosing freely and responsibly,
he knows himself as distinct from and yet related to others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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