They say some of us will never “grow up,” and they mean this not in a literal sense. Physically speaking, most of us stop “growing up” by late teens, early twenties. The colloquial phrase is often used in reference to maturity and wisdom, an inner kind of growth.
If we were to pin down where this growth is located, it would be more ocular than anything else—the “inner-ocular” or the soul’s eye—that’s what needs grown and refined. It’s about seeing the world properly. And that means seeing people better and seeing things lesser.
I experienced this recently. Not exactly from what I did, but from what someone else did in my presence.
It happened just a few weeks ago. I had a stressful court hearing in the morning and some client meetings after that. I decided to go to my alma mater in Louisville to reset and get some more focused work completed.
Earlier that same morning, I’d messaged a mentor—someone whose judgment I deeply value—with a brief message about wanting to connect again. He’d been asking about my ABA keynote address and had mentioned reading some of my book months before. I wanted to check in.
As I pulled into the main entrance of campus that afternoon, I saw him—sitting by himself in his car, engine running.
I looped back around and pulled up alongside his vehicle, which had its rear lights on, and I waved. He was on the phone, and he gave me the finger. You know, the “one second” or “hold on” motion with his free hand.
The objective world said a quick roll-down of the window, a nod to the alum, a brief acknowledgment would do the moment all the justice it required. But he did something else entirely. He turned off his car and got out.
Seeing this person I deeply respect, literally and figuratively, switch gears, turn off the engine, and get out of his car just to meet me in person said everything I could have ever wanted.
It was an act of subjective surrender. And what he said made his actions even more humbling for me.
This particular person is an avid public speaker, podcaster, and preacher. So, it means something when I say that what he did for me right there in that parking lot spoke to my soul more than anything I’ve ever heard him say. It was one of the finest examples of “actions speaking louder than words” in my view.
We met in front of his vehicle. I noticed how worn down he looked, how exhausted he seemed. I’d sent him that text in the morning wanting something from him—validation from someone I look up to. Now he was making this moment for me, and I wanted to do something for him.
I stuck my right hand out and brought my left hand gently over our handshake, lowered my head, looked him in the eyes, and asked with sincerity: “How are you doing?”
Not, “Have you finished my book?” “Did you watch the keynote?”
But, How are you?
He paused. He seemed relieved by this question. And then he spoke about his severe exhaustion. “I feel like I’m living 5 lives,” he confessed. He spoke about being consumed by a writing project unlike any other—the subjective truth breaking through the objective surface.
For someone whose life is one constant, public performance of competence and conviction, that moment of vulnerability was a profound gift. I wasn’t there as a supplicant seeking a review. I was there as a fellow subject, offering unexpected care.
My physical response was instinctive—a kind of embodied theology I’ve come to understand only through trauma and recovery. The two-handed handshake. The slight lowering of my head to meet his eyes. A non-verbal affirmation of the book’s core principle: The person is more fundamental than the position.
He’d been thinking about me last night, he said. Met someone with a Yale Law PhD and immediately wanted to connect us. Here was this exhausted man, carrying five lives, still thinking about my life, my trajectory. I’d come seeking validation. He’d come offering a kind of partnership.
While my mentor hadn’t read Saving the Subject in full yet, I believe we both experienced its working philosophy in that parking lot.
I’d gone to campus that day as an attorney seeking a reset between court hearings and client meetings. But in that parking lot, something else happened.
The pastoral calling I once had—the one redirected by a speeding Lexus—showed up anyway. Not through ordination or position, but through spiritual and relational presence. Even in a parking lot.
This is worth more than any book review.
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