Ampersand Answers: Your Inner Compass

She talked about the need to hone the “compass that’s inside all of us.”
Sally Yates, President Obama’s Deputy Attorney General,
in a speech to graduates of Harvard Law School
Michael Luo, The New Yorker, Talk of the Town, 12.22.25 

The Question: 

How do I hone my inner compass? 

&mpersand Answers: 

First and foremost, you have to have one, so what, exactly, is an inner compass? It’s the (most often) internal, unspoken, unconscious assumptions you make about life and how you do it. 

Years ago, I got caught in a domestic violence situation. If you had asked me prior to that involvement, I would have said, “No way. I would never put up with something like that.” That’s inner compass. 

And … notice please … often what such a compass contains is unconscious, and untested, until you’re doing whatever you would never and wondering how you got there. I wrote a play about it called I Would Never because that’s what everyone said to me when they learned what I’d been through. I thought I would never, too. Until never was now and I was in it past my hairline. 

Think back through your big life experiences, and your own reactions to them—huge joys, deep sorrows, heavy disappointments—the highlights and the lowlights. Witness yourself in the experiences. What did you do? How did you feel? Did you surprise yourself? Scare yourself? What did the aftermath bring into your awareness? 

Your inner compass guards and guides your integrity—your own wholeness—which is what you want to bring into every situation you encounter. It’s constantly changing. You’re constantly (hopefully) learning about life and yourself in it. That’s what we’re doing here! 

If you can, spend an afternoon making lists of your morals and your beliefs about yourself, the world, and life. You’ll end up with a picture of what you value. That’s your inner compass. 

And when you have that, you have a way to be in the world according to what you value, which is all any of us is asked to do. 

P. S. Hopefully, one of those values is uniting (ampersanding) and not dividing.

 &&&&