On 31 August 1997, I cried like a child.
Not the restrained tears of an adult. I wept with the helplessness of someone who had lost a member of his own family.
It surprised me.
I had never met Diana, Princess of Wales. She had never visited my home. She did not come from my country. She did not know my name. Yet, when the news broke that she had died in a car crash in Paris at the age of only thirty-six, something inside me broke.
When the tears finally subsided, I sat quietly and asked myself one question that has remained with me for almost three decades.
Why am I crying for someone I never met?
The answer came gently.
Because although I had never held her hand, she had touched my heart.
For more than fifteen years, I had followed her life with admiration. I saw a woman who wore a crown but never allowed royalty to separate her from humanity. I watched her comfort the dying, embrace the rejected, defend the forgotten and speak for those who had no voice. She became more than a princess to me. She became a moral compass. She became an inspiration. She became one of the reasons I came to believe that the greatest purpose of life is to serve others.
Long before I established charitable initiatives, long before public service gave me opportunities to help communities, Diana had already planted a seed in my heart.
She taught me that compassion is not measured by how much we possess, but by how much of ourselves we are willing to give.
When she walked through an active minefield in Angola in January 1997, she was not merely crossing dangerous ground. She was walking into the pain of forgotten people. When she later visited Bosnia and Herzegovina, she reminded the world that victims of war should never be abandoned once the television cameras leave.
She walked where others feared to walk.
She touched those others feared to touch.
She loved those society had forgotten how to love.
During the darkest years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when fear and ignorance caused many people to avoid even shaking hands with AIDS patients, Diana sat beside them. She held their hands. She embraced them without hesitation. That single act of humanity educated the world more powerfully than thousands of conferences and government campaigns.
She did not heal them with medicine.
She healed them with dignity.
That image has never left me.
Neither have the photographs of her kneeling before sick children, laughing with disabled people, comforting homeless men and women, embracing leprosy patients, visiting cancer wards and quietly wiping away tears from faces the world seldom noticed.
She had an extraordinary gift.
Wherever she went, people stopped feeling invisible.
Children smiled.
The lonely felt seen.
The abandoned felt loved.
The hopeless found hope again.
She never behaved as though compassion were an obligation attached to royalty.
It flowed naturally from her heart.
Perhaps that was why the world loved her.
Behind that beautiful smile lived a woman carrying enormous personal pain. Her marriage collapsed under relentless public scrutiny. She endured betrayal, loneliness, media intrusion and unimaginable emotional suffering.
Yet she refused to become bitter.
Instead, she transformed her pain into compassion.
She understood suffering because she herself had suffered.
That, perhaps, was her greatest strength.
In her famous BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir, she spoke words that history will never forget.
“I’d like to be a queen in people’s hearts.”
She never became Queen of the United Kingdom.
She became something far greater.
She became Queen of Humanity.
When Diana died, the whole world mourned.
Millions gathered outside Kensington Palace.
Mountains of flowers covered the gates.
People who had never met one another cried together.
Nearly every nation shared Britain’s grief.
When Prime Minister Tony Blair called her “The People’s Princess,” he spoke words that perfectly captured how the world already felt.
But for me, Diana’s death was deeply personal.
It felt as though humanity itself had lost one of its brightest lights.
It felt as though kindness had been wounded.
It felt as though compassion had lost one of its strongest voices.
I was not crying because a princess had died.
I was crying because goodness had been taken from the world far too soon.
As the years passed, I came to understand something even more profound.
Although Diana died at thirty-six, compassion does not die.
Love does not die.
Kindness does not die.
The lives we touch become our immortality.
Today, whenever I support humanitarian causes, encourage education, stand with vulnerable communities or extend a helping hand to someone in need, I remember Diana.
Not because she asked me to.
But because she showed me how.
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She taught me that philanthropy is not about wealth.
It is about the heart.
She taught me that leadership is not about power.
It is about service.
She taught me that greatness is not measured by titles.
It is measured by the number of lives we lift.
People often ask what inspires a person to dedicate his life to serving humanity.
For me, part of that answer bears the gentle smile of a young woman who once walked through minefields, embraced AIDS patients, comforted dying children and reminded the world that compassion is stronger than fear.
She never knew me.
But she changed me.
She never spoke to me.
But she taught me.
She never shook my hand.
But she helped shape my life.
That is why I cried on 31 August 1997.
And even today, whenever I see her photographs or hear her voice, my eyes still grow moist.
Because some people do not merely pass through history.
They pass through our hearts.
Princess Diana did exactly that.
May her gentle soul continue to rest in eternal peace.
The world called her The People’s Princess.
I remember her as the woman who taught me that the highest calling in life is to love humanity.
Professor Steve Azaiki, OON, is the Pro-Chancellor of Ritman University.