And I said to him, “You know you’ve changed my life, right?”

And he smiled when he replied with a dismissive roll of the eyes, “No, you’re the one who did all the work.”

And he had a point, to which I was compelled to nod in acknowledgement, but still I knew he didn’t have his finger exactly on the whole truth of what had happened between us. Yes, it was me who had done the heavy lifting in changing my daily habits in so many ways, but he was missing the fact that the old me wouldn’t have borne the burden. No, the changes were made by the new me—by the one who came to be only after he had grabbed me by the lapels and talked some sense into me enough times that I had begun to see things his way.

He had indeed changed my life by the power of better ideas, long advocated—until I, too, had become the advocate.