Gordon Livingston, M.D.

Residence : Columbia, MD

Dr. Livingston was born in Memphis, Tennessee and raised in upstate New York. He attended the U.S. Military Academy and upon graduation as an infantry officer was trained as a parachutist and an Army Ranger. He served for two years in the 82nd Airborne Division before attending medical school at Johns Hopkins where he trained in adult and child psychiatry. Livingston interned at Walter Reed General Hospital before volunteering for Vietnam where he served as the Regimental Surgeon for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. He was awarded the Bronze Star for valor. While in Vietnam he registered a public protest against the war and subsequently left the Army. He is a parent twice bereaved and his first book, Only Spring, described the death from leukemia of his six year old son. His recent bestseller, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, is now in its sixth printing. He has been published in a variety of magazines and newspapers, including the Readers Digest, the San Francisco Examiner, the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun.

Gordon Livingston is the father of four grown children and lives with his wife Clare in Columbia, MD where he continues to practice psychiatry.

Discussion topics

• "The Pursuit of Happiness"

  How to construct a workable map of the world that will allow you to navigate successfully.

• "Why Marriage Ruins a Lot of Good Relationships"

  The pleasures, pitfalls, and long-term prospects for those still willing to take the ultimate risk. Why any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.

• "How to remain alive until you die"

  This is the challenge facing all of us: how to continue to live useful and interesting lives even as time has its way with us. I will discuss how society sets up arbitrary expectations of the elderly and we tend to buy into them. But we don't have to. With a little planning and energy most of us can remain active and engaged well into our last years.

• "The role of forgiveness (and other forms of letting go) in constructing a life worth living"

  The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas.

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