NEEDLESTACK

Want to know why finding your niche is so hard? It’s because whatever it is you’re supposed to do is hidden in a stack of needles. The old simile comparison of a search for a particular item being like “looking for a needle in a haystack” gives you the advantage of distinction. Hay straw is cumbersome to pick through but put a needle and a straw side-by-side and you’ll have no trouble determining the needle. What’s near impossible is looking for your needle among countless counterfeits. And that’s what this world is…a stack of needles.

When I was a kid I was strange. I dressed funny and would have looked funny even if my feet were shod with Air Jordans. Wasn’t nothin’ cool about me and let’s face it. How many black guys named Norman do you know? That’s what I thought. I was a nice guy some might say. I was the guy people gravitated toward for conversation and I got good at listening. I would’ve entertained a career in psychology but it was too nebulous. It wasn’t definitive enough for me and I always felt like my ability to understand people’s plights needed a purpose linked to my Faith. But I got to college, majored in English after ignoring how easy Economics seemed to be (I had a knack for missing signs in college). On graduation day, with a degree in print journalism, I thought “Man…I could’ve majored in something else but what can I do? The only thing I’m halfway decent at is speaking English.”

But to all my relational personalities, all of my S-types, you empathic souls who are highly communicative, there’s a needle in the stack specific to your gifts. I used to wish I’d been born analytical in the technical sense, mathematically inclined as such. I thought no one paid people like me big money. But truthfully, the whole world wants someone like US to work for them, to represent them, to disarm disgruntled constituents on their behalf. A CEO would be foolish not to recruit the one who is qualified to start a company but who doubts his/her own creativity and ingenuity while feeling indebted to serving humanity. You may be the truly decent and if you are, you’ll be steeped in the needlestack as people show you option after option, trying to convince you that you belong on their team. See, I’ve found that very few people recognize your wiring. Some attempt to and genuinely want to move you forward but they don’t know what you’re on the planet for any more than they know why cats instinctively bury litter. Consequently, finding out what you were put here to do is a clumsy escapade if you don’t have a stomach for the journey or the gall to be brazen in exercising faith in God. Needless to say, I am enjoying the needlestack more these days because I’m no longer in charge of the search. The One who is seems to be saying, that the needle I’m looking for happens to be wherever I am. Don’t look for what to do so much as for what to be and the needle you seek will find you.