This morning, as I sat down to breakfast, I became jealous of my oatmeal.

Yes. My oatmeal.

Not for its cinnamon-y smell or its tan complexion (both of which are of course enviable traits).

Admittedly, I was jealous of my oatmeal because it has likely traveled thrice the distance I have traveled.

As a Mississippi native and lifelong resident, I want so badly to explore our world. I’d like to wake up to mountains and watch the sun set on the sea. I’d jump at the chance to spend an afternoon in Venice and then a sleepy morning in India, and perhaps live a lifetime in Germany and another in Iceland. Sometimes I dream that my future family will be one of nomads: a little one on my hip and the other gripping my pinky, another riding on his Daddy's shoulders- all looking out, speechless, at everything there is to see in every everywhere. There will never be a place I will not want to pack my bags for, but I am here at home without yet the opportunity of becoming a modern gypsy.

So yes, my oatmeal has probably traveled the world- bought the tee shirt for the factory, seen the sights from the transport truck window, packed its paper bag full of goodness and brought itself to me, its eventual “home”.

Maybe the dream of my little nomadic family is something I hold in the farthest corner of the most obscure cabinet in the home of my heart. There is something like a polarized magnet in me, in all of us, that knows we cannot really live such a life. The hard truth about wanderlust is that the lust fades. Eventually, our hearts grow tired of the sightseeing and the culture-learning, no matter how excruciatingly captivating they might seem. That’s because we are all home-seekers in the core of our beings. We want to see new places, meet new people; always have new, new, and different. But we know we will always come back. The warmth in the embrace of those you have long known. The exact smell of the place where you laid your head every night. A something to eat that only so-and-so could make just right. In the midst of all our searching and seeing, we are tethered to a Place we spend our whole lives trying to get back to.

Moral of the story: listen to your breakfast. Sometimes it can teach you a thing or two about life…