Lifelines

The Truth About Life and Love

Gordon Livingston writes and practices psychiatry in Columbia, MD. See full bio

November 6, 2009

Murder, Malice, and Hope

The fact is that we live in a murderous society. These mass killings are simply the worst examples. The United States has the highest homicide rate of any advanced democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom.

October 24, 2009

Relinquish Dignity Last

This, I think, is why the old have such a deserved reputation as complainers. If we become preoccupied with our physical selves when we are young we are thought of as hypochondriacs. When we think (and speak) primarily of our aches when we are old, we are just bad company. Read More

September 24, 2009

Beauty

Beauty exists at the intersection of the two great longings that dominate our lives: love and happiness.

September 9, 2009

Unanswered Prayers

As my 6 year-old son, afflicted with leukemia, fought for his life through chemotherapy and ultimately a bone marrow transplant many prayers were offered on his behalf. Was his death a commentary on my skepticism? Was he, in his innocence, somehow less deserving than children who survived? Read More

August 30, 2009

Love

We attempt to learn from our frequent and painful mistakes. We suffer the sting of rejection and loneliness. And through it all we try to discover whom to avoid and whom to cherish as if our very lives depended on it. Read More

August 8, 2009

More People to Avoid

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 There is a school of thought that truth is a flexible construct, elusive and subject to interpretation. There is at least one area in which this is demonstrably not the case. Nature and its laws are intolerant of fools. Read More

July 19, 2009

The most dangerous food to eat is a wedding cake.

The long process of figuring out why we are often drawn to people who turn out not to be good for us leads us to the conclusion that there is something deeper going on here, some rule of living that makes us want what we do not want.

July 1, 2009

Optimism

How we react to setbacks in our lives is a particularly good test of how hopeful we are. If we see some bad outcomes as being inevitable in a world in which our control is limited, we can nevertheless retain our confidence in our ability to change things for the better. Read More

June 11, 2009

Love and Time

We stumble through life without the owner's manual that we should have been issued at birth. We try to learn what it is we need to do, how we should act, to get our physical and emotional needs met. We attempt to learn from our frequent and painful mistakes. We suffer the sting of rejection and loneliness. And through it all we try to discover whom to avoid and whom to cherish as if our very lives depended on it. Read More

June 9, 2009

Kindness

Picture the alternative. In the presence of one disposed to kindness you will notice an absence of guile, an ability to listen, and a disinclination to compete. If you can reciprocate, you will experience a growing feeling of safety and trust. The need for self-protection drops away as does the requirement to appear to be something other than you are. You feel that a great burden has been lifted from you. You are, at last, good enough. In fact, the image of yourself that you see reflected in your loved one's eyes may be nearly perfect. You would like this moment to last forever. Imagine that. Read More

Happiness Basics

Research on how to increase positive moods and capitalize on your strengths has proliferated lately thanks to the positive psychology movement, and has shed light on ongoing insights into personality, mood, and cognition.

Go to the Happiness Basics page for more on Happiness including:

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