Share the Pain

What ties fathers around the world together — on the good days — are the joys of fatherhood. But, more often we share the pain.

Now it might be for a good cause, as with the seven men's men from Burnley (U.K.) who hot waxed their legs clean for charity. (At least they were smart enough not to go for a Brazilian!). And it might not be their fault, as with the gentlemen featured in "Fatherhood: Six Men, One City," a documentary created at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Social Work department. Or it might just be in fiction, as aptly described by Pulitzer winner Leonard Pitts Jr. in like Mo Johnson, racing against the onset of Alzheimer's to know his son in the new novel "Before I Forget."

Whatever the pain, the key to remember on one's darkest days is that the pain can be lived through; it is and can be shared.