Not About Music
The Man with the Beautiful Voice by Lillian B. Rubin. Beacon Press, 2003.
I read another of Dr. Rubin’s books, The Transcendent Child, during the MFA, so when I spotted this one at the library, I knew I had to pick it up.
Dr. Rubin, an influential sociologist and psychotherapist, has collected stories of her experiences as a therapist and recorded them here. Both an instruction manual and a fascinating set of case studies, this book provides endless insight into the therapeutic process and human nature. Her storytelling is superb, her love for her work and her patients obvious, her insights applicable to the reader no matter why she’s coming to the book. To learn what a therapist does? To grow as a person? To study good writing? It’s all there.
“No one is ever fully baked,” Rubin writes, recounting words spoken to a patient, “because life is a process that continually confronts us with new challenges that require new adaptations.” Amen. Aren't we all works in progress?
I had dreams for my family life, for the kids education, for my own recreation time (which currently clocked in at daily total of zero minutes, zero seconds). I longed to do things like knit, read books with real pages, write for the joy of it. Instead, I was living life of reacting—not to God’s direction—but to people’s momentary expectations, urgent tasks all shoving and bickering to be FIRST on my list. I was desperate to get back to the most important focus of every day...