Over the years that I have meditated, changes have occurred in me that were so subtle that often I couldn’t detect them at all — though I did, of course, notice that everyday stresses seemed to bother me less. If someone offended me or was rude, instead of having it out — as I might have done in the past — I instinctively adopted an attitude that the matter could wait till the next day — and in most cases, by then the issue didn’t seem worth pursuing. People were nicer to me and everything came more easily. But all that felt like no big deal. It took the observations of others — family, friends, and colleagues — to show me how dramatically I had changed.