Aaron Sorkin, 2012

“Develop your own compass, and trust it.”

Aaron Sorkin delivered this advice at Syracuse University’s 2012 commencement, returning to the school where he had studied theater. His speech mixed humor, professional memories, and a candid account of addiction and recovery. The compass line appeared among instructions to take risks, dare to fail, and remember that the first person through a wall often gets hurt. In that setting, trusting oneself was not presented as effortless confidence; it followed experience, consequences, and the willingness to choose again.

A creative career produces constant signals from audiences, executives, critics, peers, and algorithms. Some are valuable; none can decide every question. A compass represents principles stable enough to guide action when feedback conflicts. It differs from a map, which promises a known route. Sorkin’s metaphor accepts uncertainty while insisting that direction can still be chosen. The word develop is crucial: judgment is formed through study, relationships, mistakes, and exposure to lives beyond one’s own.

Trusting an internal compass can become self-flattery if it means ignoring evidence or treating criticism as cowardice. People are skilled at rationalizing choices that protect status or convenience. A reliable compass therefore needs calibration. Facts, ethical standards, affected communities, and trusted dissenters help reveal when conviction has hardened into defensiveness. Personal truth cannot cancel another person’s safety, rights, or account of harm.

Write down three principles you want a difficult decision to preserve, then ask what each available choice does to them in practice. Invite one person who is likely to disagree to test your reasoning. When the answer remains uncertain, choose the reversible experiment that produces better information. Sorkin’s phrase is less about dramatic certainty than responsible authorship. The compass earns trust when it has been examined, corrected, and used consistently even when the direction costs something. Stories themselves can reveal whether a compass works. Notice which characters a script forgives, which it punishes, and what behavior it treats as inevitable. Those patterns may expose assumptions the writer has not consciously chosen. Revision is an ethical tool because it allows instinct to meet consequence on the page before the work reaches an audience. Trust becomes stronger after that encounter, not weaker. A compass that cannot survive questions is only preference; one that changes intelligently can guide through conditions its maker never expected. The test is whether the decision remains defensible after its effects are visible to people who did not share the original instinct. It becomes dependable through the repeated discipline of testing direction against both principle and consequence.