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By Paul Alexander Wolf

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The older I become, the less certain I am about many things. Yet I remain astonished by how certain people, conversations, pieces of music—and even small moments—continue to echo through a lifetime.

Most experiences fade. They belong to a season and then vanish. Others linger quietly in the background, surfacing again years later, often when I least expect them.

Recently I found myself thinking again of a childhood friend, Jan Keesje van de Vreugde, who died from leukaemia at six, when I was five. Shortly before his death, he gave me a record of organ music played by Albert Schweitzer.

I have written elsewhere about that story, so I won’t repeat it here.

What interests me now is what followed.

I still find it surprising that a friendship lasting only a few years could continue to shape my life more than six decades later. The music led me to Schweitzer. Schweitzer led me toward Africa. Africa became intertwined with medicine. Medicine introduced me to thousands of people—often far more compelling than the diseases I was meant to be studying.

None of it was planned. There was no blueprint. No one explained the chain of cause and consequence.

Life could easily have turned out differently: had I not been born in the Dutch town of Goes, I would never have met Jan Keesje; without his illness, he might never have given me that record; without my being struck by the music, I might never have listened to it again after his death.

Yet here I am. Still listening. Still wondering.

What surprises me most is how rarely influential moments arrive with a warning. At the time, they seem ordinary: a conversation, a friendship, a teacher who gives a little extra time, a book discovered by chance. Their significance becomes visible only later.

Perhaps that is why my curiosity never fully leaves.

Over the years, the questions changed. But they did not disappear. Medicine complicated them instead of resolving them. The longer I worked, the less I wanted certainty. I wanted understanding: people carrying burdens that were largely invisible; others enduring hardships that seemed impossible; and many showing courage beyond anything their circumstances could reasonably explain. Most were simply trying to navigate life as best they could.

And the stories stayed with me.

So did another realisation: much of what shapes a life begins elsewhere. A teacher’s encouragement. A parent’s values. A friend’s example. A patient’s story. These gifts often arrive quietly, without ceremony. The giver rarely knows what becomes of them; the receiver seldom recognises their importance at the time. Still, something moves on.

I cannot easily see my life as something I constructed alone. Too many people contributed. Some stayed for years. Others crossed my path briefly. Many probably never realised they influenced me at all. Perhaps that is true for all of us.

A sentence is remembered. An encouragement lingers. A kindness travels on. A question refuses to disappear. Even when the origin is forgotten, the influence remains.

Anne Frank once wrote that, despite everything, she still believed people were really good at heart. I return to that line at times—not because it denies darkness, but because it insists that goodness persists. What moves me is that she wrote it at all. More than eighty years later, those words are still travelling.

That, too, is a thread.

Over the years I met people whose kindness outlasted their circumstances. Patients, colleagues, volunteers, friends, and occasional strangers left impressions that never quite faded. Together, they gave me the sense that goodness may be more persistent than we sometimes imagine.

Perhaps that is the deeper reason some threads continue: not because the moment itself was dramatic, but because it carries something that refuses to stay behind.

Every now and then we catch a glimpse of a gift still travelling long after its origin has faded—a piece of music, a remembered kindness, a question shaping decisions decades later.

When that happens, I pause.

Not because I understand the pattern.

But because I remain astonished by the migration of human gifts through successive lives.

After all these years, that continues to surprise me.

And maybe that is why curiosity has never entirely left.

The story, it seems, is still unfolding.