I am an independent finance journalist helping everyday people understand money, avoid scams, and make informed financial choices. But there are mornings when I wake up and feel as though the road ahead has been erased overnight. No footprints. No signposts. Just an endless stretch of uncertainty. It is a feeling many people know, though we rarely confess it: the fear that our lives have drifted off course, that the universe is conspiring against us, or worse, that God Himself has gone silent.
For me, that fear has defined most of my adult life.
I turned 33 this year. It might seem like an ordinary number, but to me it has carried almost mythic weight. Jesus, whose story has shaped my faith since childhood, was crucified at 33. Dr. Ben Carson, the surgeon whose books fired my imagination as a boy, became director of paediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins at 33. So when I was younger, I carved that number into my mind as the age of arrival. If greatness was possible, I told myself, then by 33 I too must stand where destiny intended me to stand.
That deadline gave me fuel in my twenties. But it also set a trap. Because now here I am: August 26, 2025. Thirty-three years old. And instead of standing at the summit of some carefully laid plan, I find myself staring at the debris of a dream I can no longer touch.
I had wanted to be a surgeon. Not just casually, but with a fire that consumed my school years. The scalpel, the theatre, the delicate art of healing—it was all I saw for myself. But life, as it does, refused to follow my script. The path bent. Opportunities vanished. The gates to medicine closed one by one. And so I arrived here, a man whose dream expired right on schedule.
When that dream collapsed, I relentlessly sought to revive it in other forms. I discovered a military organisation in France—the French Foreign Legion. It seemed like a lifeline: a secure job, and the chance to serve something bigger than myself. In the military, I could have been a combat medic—treating wounded soldiers, running clinics in underserved areas, rescuing survivors after disasters. But the French embassy in my country denied me a visa. Another door shut.
Still, I did not give up. I learned that in certain Asian countries one could become a fully qualified English teacher with just a TEFL certificate—a course that takes less than a month. It was a consolation, perhaps, but a meaningful one: I would still be serving, making someone’s life a little better. Yet again, fate had other plans. The only plane ticket I could afford required transits through countries whose visas I could not obtain. Once more, a dream went up in smoke.
Each day since, I have carried that weight: the sense of a plan collapsing, the gnawing suspicion that heaven isn’t listening. Some days it feels like failure; other days, like punishment.
And yet here lies the paradox: even in the midst of collapse, I have not been idle. I’ve written. I’ve filled pages with questions and reflections. I’ve even managed to publish a 200-page book and run a news blog. To the casual observer, those are markers of achievement. But success is a slippery thing. It depends less on what you hold in your hand and more on what you once aimed for.
Take, for instance, a carpenter. Imagine one who sets a modest goal: to serve a third of the local market in his small town. When he reaches that share, he celebrates—it feels like triumph. Now imagine a different carpenter, a factory owner who once controlled 90% of the market. If his fortunes fall and he too finds himself with just 30% of the share, he mourns. To him, it feels like failure, even though he and the first carpenter stand on the exact same number. Same reality, different meaning—because the expectations were not the same.
That is how I feel when I look at my writing. To some, a news blog and a book are milestones. To me, they look like consolation prizes compared to the surgeon’s scalpel I once dreamed of holding, the bandage I longed to wrap around a bleeding soldier, or even the handwriting I wished to leave on a chalkboard in Asia.
But there’s something I must admit: whenever the fire of hardship burns too hot, whenever the waters of despair rise too high, I find myself turning instinctively to writing. It is my only refuge. Writing is not just what I do when I have time; it is what I do when I am drowning. It saves me.
And maybe that’s the lesson I was too stubborn to see. Life is not obligated to honour our first drafts. Jesus Himself did not come to earth with the dream of dying a humiliating death at the hands of the very people He came to save. That was not His dream. But it became necessary. Ben Carson did not grow up dreaming of neurosurgery either. At first, he wanted to be a missionary doctor. Later, he imagined psychiatry, because on television psychiatrists always looked wealthy. Only in medical school did he discover his true gift—in his hands, in the operating theatre. The greatest neurosurgeon of our time almost didn’t happen, until life shifted its melody and he dared to dance to the new rhythm.
That is what life is: a song that keeps changing. Living is learning to dance to it. Some people refuse to dance, and they spend their lives standing still, lamenting the silence. Others accept the new beat and adjust their steps, even if clumsily at first. Those are the ones who discover beauty where they never expected it.
For Jesus, the rhythm led to the cross. For Carson, it led from psychiatry to neurosurgery. For me, it has led from the scalpel, to bandages, to the chalkboard, and eventually, to the pen.
When I was younger, I thought my purpose was to heal flesh with a surgeon’s precision, or later, to heal wounded soldiers, or to help sick children in undeserved countries, or to teach a child in Asia to read and write English. But the music changed. Now I see that my purpose may be to heal, bandage, and teach through the pen.
That is why I became a journalist—a finance journalist, to be specific. I didn’t want to be the kind of journalist who simply writes gossip or chases trending stories. I wanted to help people, to make their lives better. If I can report finance news and educate people about money in ways that genuinely change lives, then I have served my purpose. This wasn’t my original dream. I didn’t plan it. But life forced me to learn a new rhythm, and the pen became the only tool left in my hand.
And perhaps that is also why I am telling you this: because you, too, may be staring at a collapsed plan, a dream that has slipped away, a rhythm you no longer recognise. If so, take heart. It is not the end of your song. When the melody shifted for me, I picked up the pen—to heal, to bandage, to teach through words. When the melody shifts for you, the only question that matters is whether you will dare to dance to the new song.
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Opinion