By Paul Alexander Wolf

There are seasons in life when the path ahead is obvious. And then there are seasons when the truth arrives by surprise – not through triumph, but through rupture. I’ve lived long enough to know that the moments that break us open are often the same moments that reveal who we were meant to be all along.

For many years, I believed my purpose sat inside hospitals, in the long corridors of service, in the small victories of rural medicine, and in the quiet heroism of those who work without applause. And in part, that was true. But life has a way of re-igniting the inner fire when we least expect it – through the suffering we witness, the people who cross our path, and the places that call us back. Sometimes inconveniently. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes both before lunchtime.

I’ve seen two worlds in one lifetime:

the world that wounds us, and the world that shapes us.

And somewhere between the two, I discovered a third –

the world where meaning is forged.

What I know now is simple: we are shaped by the encounters that demand our courage,

the ones that expose what we fear,

and the ones that reveal what we love.

Some encounters teach us through opportunity.

Others through contradiction.

A few – the rare ones – move something inside us that had waited decades to awaken.

I met people whose strength outpaced their circumstances, whose devotion carried them back into danger, whose compassion cost them more than the world will ever fully understand. And in witnessing their courage, I found myself re-examining my own life – not as a man entering old age, but as someone beginning a final chapter with a clearer voice, a clearer conscience, and a clearer sense of what matters. (The surprising benefit of getting older is that you stop pretending you have unlimited time, and you start telling the truth with both hands.)

There is a kind of love – not romantic, not possessive, not youthful – but soul-recognition, the kind that calls you to the better part of yourself, the part you almost forgot you had. I was fortunate enough to encounter that. It made me see my own life through a different lens. It made me realise that even at seventy, the heart can wake in ways the mind didn’t plan for. And in that awakening, I found not desire, but direction.

The truth is this: our lives are not measured by certainty, but by honesty.

Not by how long we walk, but by what remains alive in us while we walk it.

In recent years, I’ve learned that leadership is not about titles or systems. It is about staying large when worlds get small. It is about remaining grounded when others drift. It is about choosing integrity when convenience whispers otherwise. And sometimes it is about speaking with courage into places where silence once felt safer. (Courage, as it turns out, is often just the grown-up version of telling the truth.)

But I also learned something softer, something deeper – that the real measure of a life is the tenderness we are still capable of offering, long after the world has tried to harden us.

I have seen people carry unbearable grief and still rise.

I have seen people break, and somehow remain whole.

I have seen people walk into danger because compassion gave them no alternative.

And I have seen that the strongest souls are often the most vulnerable ones.

Perhaps that is why, at this stage of my life, I find myself returning to the places that shaped me – Africa, medicine, service – not out of nostalgia, but out of purpose. There are still fires to tend, still truths to speak, still the downtrodden to stand with. And I’ve come to understand that the final chapter of a life can be the most honest of all – because there is nothing left to prove, and everything left to give.

I don’t know how long this chapter will be. None of us do. But I know this:

I will walk it with clarity,

with conscience,

with courage,

and with the quiet grace of knowing that everything meaningful in my life has always begun with love –

love of the forgotten, love of the wounded, love of the truth,

and yes, love of the few souls who awaken in us the part that still believes in what is sacred.

If there is a lesson here, it is simply this:

What remains honest and alive in us – that is what we must follow.

That is what we must protect.

That is what we must give to the world while we still can.

And for whatever time I have left, I intend to do exactly that –

with gratitude, and with grace.