The Investment of Wishing Well
I have always been a man who wishes people well,
because the world is already heavy enough
without us adding stones to one another’s pockets.
Kindness, I have learned, is not small.
It is not soft in the way the weak are soft.
It is soft in the way rain is soft
patient, constant, willing to keep coming
until even the hardest ground begins to change.
I have seen what cruelty can do.
I have seen it walk into a room wearing a smile,
seen it shake hands with shame and call itself strength.
But I have also seen a single good word
lift a man who was nearly gone.
I have seen hope arrive late,
breathing hard,
and still be enough.
So I believe in good wishes.
I believe they are investments.
Not the kind that glitter in a banker’s lamp,
not the kind that buy a larger house
or a louder life,
but the kind that quietly compound in the soul.
One blessing becomes two.
One act of mercy becomes a memory.
One moment of compassion becomes a door
someone else may live long enough to open.
We are always putting something into the world.
A look.
A word.
A silence.
A hand held out or pulled back.
And what we invest in others
does not disappear.
It goes somewhere.
It takes root.
It returns later, changed perhaps,
but alive.
A wish, by itself, is only a breath.
A beautiful breath, yes.
A fragile one.
A thing that can vanish
if it is never trusted with movement.
A wish needs legs.
It needs nerve.
It needs the stubborn light of action.
Otherwise it remains a lantern
hung in an empty room.
But give a wish a backbone,
and watch what happens.
Give it discipline.
Give it direction.
Give it the honest labor of a human heart
that refuses to quit.
Then the wish becomes a road.
Then it becomes a bridge.
Then it becomes the thing
that carries a person across
when the water is too deep
and the night is too long.
I wish you a road
that meets your heart halfway.
Not a road that flatters you.
Not a road that always agrees.
But one that tells the truth
and still keeps you moving.
May it bend when you need mercy.
May it rise when you need courage.
May it open like morning
after a season of hard weather.
I wish you a life
that does not mistake noise for purpose.
A life that knows the difference
between being seen
and being known.
A life that can stand in the middle of a storm
without needing to become the storm.
Because there is a kind of strength
that does not shout.
It endures.
It listens.
It remains kind
even when kindness is not fashionable,
even when the world rewards the sharp tongue
and the closed fist.
May your wish be clear enough
to guide you through the smoke.
May your courage be steady enough
to keep you warm when the world response to well wishes for retirement goes cold.
May you rise when the mountain is cruel.
May you keep your name
when others try to rename you.
May you keep your peace
when others would spend it for you.
And if you fall
because everyone falls
may you fall in a way
that teaches your hands how to become stronger.
May the ground not be your ending,
only your reminder
that even the broken earth
still knows how to hold a seed.
That is what a wish is.
A seed.
Not a fantasy.
Not a trick of the light.
A seed.
Small, ordinary, easy to overlook,
and carrying inside it
an entire future
it has not yet met.
But seeds need rain.
Dreams need care.
Love needs repetition.
And hope
hope needs somebody stubborn enough
to keep watering what has not yet bloomed.
So I will keep wishing people well.
Not because I am blind.
Not because I have not been bruised.
Not because I have never known disappointment
or the long quiet ache
of giving more than I received.
I will keep wishing people well
because I know what a blessing can do
when it lands at exactly the right moment.
I know what it means
to be tired and still be seen.
To be ashamed and still be welcomed.
To be hungry for dignity
and find it in another person’s eyes.
That is not nothing.
That is everything.
And if my life leaves a mark,
let it not be in gold
or in applause
or in any loud monument built to outlast me.
Let it be in the lives I touched gently.
Let it be in the people
who walked away a little taller
because I refused to make them smaller.
Let it be in the quiet, unseen math of mercy
the kind that multiplies
when no one is watching.
For the greatest investment
a human being can make
is not money.
It is not power.
It is not the thin, tired crown
of being above someone else.
The greatest investment
is hope.
The greatest investment
is love.
The greatest investment
is the decision
to leave the world
less lonely than you found it.
And if there is one thing
I wish for all of us,
it is this:
may we become the kind of people
whose kindness keeps earning interest
long after we are gone.
May God protect you, and may His peace be with you always.
Roy Dawson Earth Angel Master Magical Healer Singer‑Songwriter Prophet Poet.