Several times in the woods, once on the open sea, I have been lost. It is a terrible feeling, disorienting, telescopes life into a moment. You question everything. Fear wants dominance. You have to dismiss it, stay calm, or losing your calm regain it, trust your compass, and envision truth winning.
On the open ocean in my mid-teens, small sailboat, fog everywhere, storm rising, darkness falling, a friend and I drifted away from Maine’s coast, utterly lost, only tools compass, and a map.
People talk of terror, and we have all felt it, something ominous coming, fear in your throat, heart accelerating, no control. That was this, with time to question, indulge doubt, or stay the course.
On another occasion, a senior State Department official, surrounded by others, sat me down. I was then a young appointee. They were senior foreign service officers. They wanted a specific answer and wanted me to agree. It was the wrong answer. I refused.
Knowing they could politically knife me, and end my career, I got calm, kept my compass, and invited the firing. The answer would not come from me. My compass has only one true north.
We all face such situations, and circumstances inviting fear, doubt, or worry. But there is something very comforting, a deep reservoir of relief, in knowing what you know – and sticking by it.
The modern world is alive with these off-putting circumstances, stresses, tests, and a thousand ways of telling us to doubt, that we are wrong, lost, off course, must adjust to others. Do not believe it.
In Thomas Jefferson’s letters, he offers counsel valuable even today. “If ever you find yourself environed with difficulties and perplexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to extricate yourself, do what is right… and be assured that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations.”
He continued. “Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth in the easiest manner possible.” In other words, we each know true north. In the roughest waters, follow it.
“The knot which you thought a Gordian one… will untie itself before you. Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimilation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice.” Dodging deepens the water.
Even in his time, humanity was unchanging, and Jefferson saw it. Missing true north makes things worse. “This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed.”
In another writing on the same topic, he concluded: “The precept of Providence is, to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him.”
So, what happened? In my mid-teens, desperately clinging to a 14-foot Hobie Cat in seas that grew taller, disappearing between swells, darkness enveloping the little boat, two kids clung to their compass, believed it would land them in a safe place, and hit a little island, never happier.
The young appointee, who refused misguided pressure from senior bureaucrats, got ever more responsibility, and the respect of his seniors, and in time proved the right answer leads good places. Ironically, if indulging fear “increases the difficulties,” the opposite often removes them.
If Jefferson’s words resonated 200 years ago, they have a profound fit for today. Trust your true north and know things will turn out right, or as Jefferson summed: “Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to the right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day… assured that the public approbations will in the end … be with us.” Follow your compass.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
