Greetings, SBF:
My awakening to reality is hardly on the cerebral level of the items you enumerate, but here goes:
1) The Truth, and its putative basis, THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology did it for me.
2) People: I was wrong about people, seeing only the good about my nimbus-topped friends and family. I learned that they, like me, have feet of clay. As a result of my seeing all people as they truly are -- imperfect humans -- I am a realist now, in most matters great and small. I am so much older and somewhat wiser. My dad was a male Pollyanna, and the apple, truly, falls near the tree.