There is a separation in my emotional life now so far removed from how it and I used to be. This fascinates me. I have lived through many rough patches in my life.

There were times when money was scarce. People were unkind and unfriendly. Doors shut when I desperately wanted them to open. At each and every challenge in the past, I was convinced “this was it.” Whatever state of distress I was in, I convinced myself that was my life forever. Thankfully I was wrong.

A friend and I were talking about childbirth the other day and all of the unnecessary drama that often surrounds it. No doubt childbirth is a dramatic life event. But I was somehow attuned to the messages of unbearable pain during labor, so intense, in fact, it made women wonder why anyone would undergo it more than once in a lifetime. Which is ridiculous when you think of it. Pioneer women and Catholics thought nothing of going through childbirth a dozen or more times.

Here’s what I learned about all the doomsaying around labor. It is a natural process. It was set up that way. By no means necessarily pleasant for mothers, it is a universal experience. Nature sets up most women to get through it successfully if they are lucky.

Childbirth is fraught with risk, I realize. But the “ain’t it awful” mantra around childbirth’s unimaginable pain is largely fictitious. Nature prepares women. At a point, nature takes over. Babies are rarely “willed” into being by any individual mother though I must say, it kinda felt like that at the time.

I was thinking something similar thing about having a painful past. From my present vantage point, all of the painful events of the past seem almost dream-like. As if I were being led through circumstances I needed to stare down and get through. That is not to say I can’t remember them vividly. I do.

What they no longer have the power to do, however, is to buckle and derail me. I can’t fully say how I got from a place where shame led me to wish the earth would open up and swallow me. Or how anxiety and insecurity would cause me to tremble with fear before opening my mouth or speaking up for myself.

It was a process of facing head-on and facing up to the demons that were resident inside me. I drank to excess. No one forced me to. No one forced me to stop. I fought the addiction until I was driving my own life and not the other way around when it was driving me.

There were dozens of helpers and guides along the way. My other insight is that I never stopped looking for answers or relief. I am what you would call a “seeker” I guess to the extent that I know what that is. I haven’t quit. Slowed down my pace a little but never quit.

That would have been the greatest failure. It is often said that it is not so much the things you have done in your life – even bad things – that you regret on your deathbed, but the things you didn’t do. That is arguable but I do know that pursuing what moves and drives you to the fullest extent is usually better than doing nothing.

I did not have what most would call a “conventional” career with thirty years at a desk and ending with a pension and gold watch. I traveled to many far-flung places in the world when I was fit and strong enough to do so. There are very few places today that call me strongly enough to actually pack a suitcase for.

I have culled through and chucked enough of life’s flotsam and jetsam to appreciate what I have. To live comfortably with what I don’t. And to put experiences of success and failure in perspective.

Rudyard Kipling said about reaching a goal of maturity in his classic poem, If: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” “If you can fill the unforgiving minute, With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Well, I do that most of the time these days. I figure that means I have finally become a man.

There are a million ways to share the truth. Each word, each book, each song, each play, each speech (well, that’s a little iffy). The human race is saddled with certain “inalienable truths” that are repeated repeatedly as we motor along in life.

As each songwriter discovers a new truth and writers about it, we learn anew what matters should matter to us as humans. The lesson is then again released into the world in a new form.

Personally, I think this is the messaging strategy of the great communicators. One who comes to mind is the late Joseph R. Smallwood of Newfoundland. When Smallwood was angling (and he was always angling), for the admission of Newfoundland to the Dominion of Canada in 1949, he gave speeches. Later, when Confederation had been achieved, he gave speeches galore in his bid to become the first Premier of said newly admitted province in the firmament of the Dominion of Canada.

Smallwood had a rule about speeches (likely others had the same rule, too but I actually heard Smallwood say this): First, tell the people what you are going to tell them. Next, tell them what you want to tell them. And conclude by telling what you told them. Repetition and consistent messaging were his secret. He hung on to power as Premier in Newfoundland for a long time. (Some might argue for too long but that is another post and too political for the point I want to make.)

But he nailed the device. Humans can be slow learners. And even when they learn lessons, they only retain them if they repeatedly hear them. Take the Bible, for example. Those messages have held sway for eons through their repetition at once-weekly (or more) church services for the devout and civic-minded.

Look at advertising. Who among us has not thrown aside their vow of paucity for the various enticements slung at us by commercials on the “boob tube.” (Remember when that was what TVs were called. These days calling television that would belabor the obvious.)

Successful TV shows are formulaic. The cast gets established and performs their roles consistently. We love that we humans do. We form relationships of sorts with them and we think we know who they are. This certainty appeals to us humans at some level. Think of Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Law and Order, The Simpsons, even.

And while it happens less today, think about the tragedy of typecasting. Poor Shirley Temple could not sustain an acting career once she outgrew the persona of an adorable cherub and became – as it were – a real live girl.

Actors have complained for years that their gender, looks, physique and public presentation have consigned them to similar roles for their entire careers. Take poor Rock Hudson, for example. Woefully miscast as the hunky lover of women for years until AIDS outed him.