The shortest way to maturity is to struggle with difficulties.

Nobody applies for this apprenticeship. There's no start date, no supervisor, and the work gets assigned without warning: a diagnosis, a redundancy, a person leaving.

Shortest doesn't mean easiest. It means direct. There is no comparable route to finding out how you behave under real weight, which is why people who've been through things tend to recognise each other quickly.

The compensation is small and delayed and it arrives whether or not anyone acknowledges it — a shorter distance, next time, between a hard thing happening and you knowing what to do first.