The Needle
"A dream is not a place you arrive. It's the needle that keeps you from drifting." — Steve Martin – Vision-Keeper, Dream Coach, and Grandfather
The Needle
There is a small brass thing on my desk that has never once lied to me.
It does not care how busy I am. It does not flatter my motion or applaud my schedule. When I spin in circles — and I have spun in circles for years at a time — it waits, patient as stone, and the moment I stop, it remembers north. Not the north I want. The north that is.
I have drifted. I will not pretend otherwise. I gave decades to a current that was warm and competent and quietly wrong for me, and the current never told me. Currents don’t. They carry you and call it kindness. It was the needle that told me — small, scratched, stubborn — twitching toward a life I hadn’t lived yet.
What I know now, that I did not know at fifty: the needle was always there. It is always there, in everyone. We bury it under motion. We muffle it with noise. But it does not break and it does not leave. It only waits for the stillness in which it can speak.
Be still, just once, tonight. Long enough to feel the twitch.
That twitch is your dream, trying to give you a direction.
My grandpa always said
Don’t ask how fast you’re going till you’ve checked which way you’re pointed. Speed in the wrong direction just gets you lost quicker.”
One Simple Action You Can Take Right Now
The Trajectory Question. Ask yourself: If my life kept moving in exactly the direction it’s moving now, where would I be in ten years? Write the honest answer. Any flinch you feel is your compass twitching toward a north you’ve been ignoring.
Insights from My Advisory Board
Dolly Parton would put it plainest and warmest: find out who you are and do it on purpose — and have a whole lot of fun aiming, because a joyless dream isn’t worth the walk.