Every significant turning point in life has a face attached to it—a person who steps in, knowingly or unknowingly, and changes the entire trajectory of your story. For me, that face belonged to a stranger on the F train. Well, not quite a stranger. More like a passing comet I mistook for a subway regular. Let’s call him Mr. White Shirt, because that’s all I knew about him initially: a crisp, perpetually ironed white shirt and an uncanny ability to fish out truths people didn’t even know they carried.

Section 1: "Who Me? Gifted?"

It was summer in Brooklyn, the kind where the air is sticky enough to glue you to bad decisions and the thought of turning your life around feels like a fever dream. I was fresh out of my MBA program, tangled in a web of corporate monotony I’d told myself I wanted but couldn’t quite stomach. Marketing strategy meetings felt like running laps in place—sweaty, repetitive, and ultimately leading nowhere exciting.

I was reading James Baldwin: Collected Essays on the F train ride back to my studio one night when the seat next to mine let out a defeated sigh of cotton fabric. Mr. White Shirt had arrived, his briefcase an existential punctuation mark. He noticed my book.

"That's heavy," he quipped, not unkindly.
"Baldwin? Emotionally? Or in a 'I-shouldn’t-have-packed-this-in-my-bag-today' kind of way?" I asked, barely looking up.
"Both," he said. "But mostly heavy in weight, emotional too if you're not skimming."

Bold move to assume I skim. But maybe he had a point because, an hour into Baldwin's brilliance, my mind had wandered straight into questioning my own life. Call it cosmic irony—or Baldwin's literary grip—but it would be Mr. White Shirt whose orbit brought a gravity I couldn’t ignore.

His next question landed like a dart: "What do you do with stories like those? Sit on them, or let them carry you somewhere?"

I stammered. My rehearsed answer to nosy relatives—"Oh, I’m in marketing, very stable, thanks for asking"—suddenly felt clunky, hollow, unworthy of the energy crackling between us.

"I write sometimes," I admitted cautiously, "or at least I used to."

"You should," he said, definitive like punctuation. "But don’t just write. Write things that scare you, embarrass you a little even." Then he stood up at his stop with what would've been a mic-drop gesture if he'd been holding one. "Everyone else already has enough people telling them half-truths. What’s one more voice in the room, unless it’s yours?"

That moment was both everything and ridiculously small. A stranger saw something in me I wasn’t brave enough to see myself: that I could take something stirring inside me—and run with it like I didn’t know failure. He gave me permission but presented it as a dare.

Section 2: "The Thing About Mirrors"

It's funny how we don’t always recognize our own reflection until someone holds a mirror up to us, tilts it at just the right angle, and says, "There. See?" And yes, Mr. White Shirt was a metaphorical mirror, but let me tell you, his words hit with the clarity of Cosmopolitan’s “Is He Ghosting You?” quizzes.

The truth is, before someone sees you, you have to be ready—or at least vulnerable enough—to be seen. I realized later how Baldwin’s essays had already been working on me, loosening the screws of my routine, asking why I wasn’t doing justice to the stories in my head. Mr. White Shirt wasn’t offering divine intervention as much as he was a loud (albeit jolting) nudge. But isn’t that the thing about mentors, even those who appear briefly? They arrive when you're teetering close enough to the edge that it only takes a whisper to jump—or fly.

Some moments hit like rom-com climaxes. This one was even messier: untucked shirts, fluorescent subway lighting, the faint smell of someone’s leftover Thai food. It was the opposite of grand—and somehow, that made it perfect.

Section 3: "What It Means to Be Seen"

Being "seen" is not necessarily about someone spotting your talents and handing you the metaphorical keys to the kingdom. Often, it’s quieter, subtler. The friend who calls you out, not in criticism but care, saying, "You don’t seem like yourself lately." The mentor who cheekily suggests you stop sabotaging yourself and write, dance, create, or do whatever it is you’re so obviously meant to do.

Or the stranger like Mr. White Shirt who reminds you—without sugarcoating it—that there’s an itch you’re responsible for scratching, because no one else will. The thing about those people is they don’t always stick around. Sometimes they don’t need to. Their job isn’t to walk with you every step of the way but to remind you that the journey is yours to take.

In my case, I started small: keeping a journal, publishing a piece on Brooklyn streetscapes that felt more like personal therapy. A publisher read it, reached out, and suddenly I wasn’t just dabbling; I was neck-deep in literary consulting, curating anthologies, and eventually landing here, writing pieces like this one.

But let’s not get it twisted: there’s no quick cut to success. It’s awkward, stretchy, and full of those terrifying Baldwin-inspired moments where you risk stepping outside the comfort of being liked. Over time, though, you look back and notice the difference between what you allowed yourself to be versus who you’re becoming.

Section 4: "How Do You Spot Your 'Mr. White Shirt'?"

Here’s some unsolicited advice (or maybe it’s compulsively solicited since you’re still reading):
- Stay open. These pivotal moments rarely show up labeled as "life-changing," all neon-lit and obvious. They’re messy, unassuming. They’re bald men on quiet train rides or quirky coworkers at the office happy hour.
- Ask—and actually listen. People who ask "why not?" or "what are you afraid of?" aren’t nosy. They’re giving you conversation doorways, urging you to step through.
- Pay it forward. Not all of us get to masterfully arrive like Mr. White Shirt with a life-altering one-liner. But maybe you’ll notice someone else’s Baldwin moment and say, "I see you. Go do this thing." It doesn’t take much to hand someone their spark back.

Conclusion: "What’s Your Move?"

If you’ve ever hesitated to claim your potential, let me remind you: there’s someone out there who would see you and say go. But in the meantime, you can be that someone for yourself. Reflect on that daring voice inside you, however faint it may feel right now.

Because the truth is, the person who sees us most profoundly usually starts by handing us a mirror and saying, “Yes—you.”