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Gerrard remembers his first steps on the road to becoming the heartbeat of the club, a late substitute appearance against Blackburn Rovers at Anfield in 1998, with clarity. And his focus remains as unambiguous.
"My priority is to win the Premier League," he said in an interview with the Daily Express. "We believe we are good enough to challenge.
"Everyone wants it so badly here. I want it because I have never won it - and I don't want to finish my career without one."
Liverpool face West Ham on Monday with the possibility of a victory sending them clear at the top of the table, depending on Chelsea's result against Arsenal the day before.
But they will have to do without Fernando Torrres, with whom Gerrard has forged such a devastating partnership, after the Spaniard picked up a hamstring injury in the midweek Champions League victory over Marseille.
Liverpool beat Manchester United earlier in the season without the Spaniard and Gerrard believes the club is in it's strongest position yet to deliver the prize that everyone connected with the club craves.
"Getting involved in the title race and staying in it is a completely different challenge to what we are used to at Liverpool," he said.
"To finish in the top four you can have a defeat and it does not hit you that bad. Two successive defeats in the title race and it could be over. But we are in there and everyone wants to make sure that's the case at the end of the season.
"I'm coming up to 10 years and it doesn't feel like that. It's flown. I'm sure the next five or six will be exactly the same, that's why I have to make the most of every minute I've got."
It is all a far cry from a time when Gerrard, fresh from leaving school, was thrilled to be starting a career as a professional footballer with the club he loves and able to enjoy every minute of it, without the weight of expectation that his subsequent performances have brought to his shoulders.
"You used to have 20 apprentices in one changing room and 20 young pros in another and the banter was unbelievable," said Gerrard.
"To leave school and know you were coming to play football every day, those were the best two years of my life.
"I was on the least money at the time - £47.50 a week - but I used to love getting up in the morning, getting on one or two buses and getting to Melwood.
"For two years I loved every single day - win, lose or draw. Nowadays, I still love it - but only when we win."
Gerrard is at pains to explain that his has not been a boys own story on a constant upward curve of success upon success, with a number of setbacks forging his character as much as nights like the one in Istanbul in 2005 when he lifted Liverpool's fifth European Cup.
"My career certainly hasn't gone up, up, up, up," he said. "It has been up, up, up, down, down. Up, down. Up, up. I cannot think of any footballer around the world whose career has been up, up, up.
"I don't want to finish my career and people to look at me as a failure.
"Looking back, I'm pleased how I have reacted. From the bad tackles and sending offs, to all the talk of a Chelsea move, which I regret getting involved in, and the own-goal in the cup final. Without the setbacks, I don't think I'd have achieved as much as I have."
"I wouldn't change anything for the world. I am captain of the club and doing what I always wanted.
"It's only as you get older though that you realise how important playing for Liverpool is. You cannot grasp that when you are setting out, so maybe that is why I look at things a bit differently. It's only when you play you realise how many people follow the club, how many people you have the ability to make happy that you know you have to win. Nothing else.
"But I don't think the pressure gets to the stage where you think, 'I can't handle this'.
"The pros outweigh the cons by a million miles. When you come off the pitch having beaten Everton, Manchester United or Chelsea, or you win a semi-final to reach a final, you cannot beat those buzzes."