I smiled at her.

“Because for a long time,” I said, “I confused being humble with making myself smaller so that fragile people could feel large.

They are not the same thing.

I hope it takes you far less time than it took me to learn the difference.”

I have kept turning that distinction over, because I think it is the whole lesson of those eight years compressed into a single sentence, and I did not have it clearly until I said it out loud to a stranger in a hallway.

Real humility is honest about your size — it simply declines to make your size the point.