Quit talking. Stop listening. We'd all be better off with a "mute" button on the soundtrack of our lives.
That, in a word or four, is the essential lesson of life, according to psychiatrist Gordon Livingston. After three decades of hearing people pour out their dreams, disappointments and fears, his single most valuable piece of advice is this:
"We endure what we must. I don't find anything more profound than that," says Gordon Livingston, author of "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart."
(Grant L. Gursky For The Washington Post)
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"We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do. Conversely, in judging other people we need to pay attention not to what they promise but how they behave. . . . We are drowning in words, many of which turn out to be the lies we tell ourselves or others."
Most of the heartbreak of life, he says, comes from ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior. Good intentions aren't a substitute for good acts. Sweet nothings mean nothing. Just do it. It's a harsh truth, especially in Washington, where words, promises and spin all swamp deeds.
This lesson is the second essay in Livingston's new book, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now." Actually, it's 30 things that you needed to know when you were young but wouldn't have listened to -- but better late than never.
Livingston, 66, never intended to toss yet another tome into the self-help maw when he starting writing the book. He had a full-time psychiatric practice in Columbia and wrote the occasional essay and op-ed piece. Then last spring, Blue Cross/Blue Shield announced it was closing the medical group he had worked with for 33 years, and he began the soul-searching that comes with reaching such a milestone in one's career.
"I think it's natural to wonder, 'What's that been all about?' " he says. " 'What have I learned over that period of time I didn't know beforehand?' "
He began jotting down notes: the central issues that brought patients into his office, truths Livingston thought were self-evident but not so obvious to be cliches. He grafted those ideas onto the experiences of his own life, which included a tour of duty in Vietnam and the deaths of two sons 13 years ago. The result is 30 essays, with a foreword by Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Sen. John Edwards.
"What I like about the way Gordon writes is that he's really direct -- he's willing to be hard with you," Edwards said last week in an interview. "He's like a dentist who says, 'You're not flossing.' "
The two met on a Web site for bereaved parents eight years ago, shortly after the death of Edwards's 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car crash. Edwards wasn't a household name back then, but Livingston loved the way she wrote, and the two clicked online.
They had grief in common. In 1991, Livingston's oldest son, 22-year-old Andrew, committed suicide after a long battle with bipolar disorder. Six months later, his youngest son, Lucas, was diagnosed with leukemia. A few months later, after a bone-marrow transplant from Livingston caused complications, Lucas died. He was 6 years old.
"The lesson, if there is a lesson to be learned from something like that, is that we endure what we must," he says. "I don't find anything more profound than that. Most of the lessons that people imagine bereaved parents learn are really lost on most bereaved parents: This idea that somehow you achieve some sort of 'closure,' which is a word that is just hated by parents who have lost children, because there really is none to life's really profound losses. And then people say, 'You're so strong. You got through this.' And the answer to that is, 'What choice do you have?' "
Having survived tragedy twice, he guided Edwards through the process. "Gordon did not preach or judge," she writes in the foreword. "He illuminated where I stood so I could better see myself and the world around me, and then he took that light and held it out so I could see the footholds and ledges I would need to reclaim a productive life." Five years ago, Livingston wrote his first book, "Only Spring," about Lucas and the process of mourning.
They have met in person just once but have remained e-mail buddies over the years. Edwards keeps a folder marked "Gordon" on her desk with his messages to reread when the mood or need strikes. Amid all the expressions of sympathy and concern recently after Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer, Livingston understood that she is still in fighting form.
