Montesquieu once wrote that we received three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world.

The third contradicts all that the first two teach us. That thing called life, right?

And the more I think about this, the more I get it.

The most important rules are the unwritten rules.

The most significant boundaries are the ones we learn to ignore.

The greatest tests don't concern

what we know, but our ability to move forward when we don't. It's the real world that shows

us we only get meaning through sacrifice and discomfort. That shows us the homes we lived in and the classrooms we learned in were meant

to block out the uncertainty and unpredictability of life.

They were meant to draw a line directly from effort to result and cause to effect, but the

line that the real world draws, well, it isn't so straight.

At least not all the time.

And it's this third education that shows us how powerful we truly are.

Sometimes I think back to the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, that first year, the writing, the recording, the producing, the editing, the beginnings of a pursuit that I believed to be so important.

Looking around and just seeing no result, like none, and thinking, how could this be? You know, I worked so hard, suffered so much,

I put all of me into this, only to realize I had no clue what all of me meant. And what I thought

constituted life was really just the tip of an iceberg that extended so far underwater that it would take a lifetime to uncover.

The real world upon introduction always starts by showing you how much you don't know.

And I look back and I don't really think about the financial concerns, although they were very real.

I don't remember much of the everyday worry and anxiety bouncing around in my head, although it was definitely there.

I remember learning one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned that life is hard,

but it's supposed to be.

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