Leaving Pieces

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” 

-Miriam Adeney

I want to leave pieces of myself all over the world. I want to tell my young children the tales of my travels and I want to inspire my older children to follow their dreams. I want to live, teach and inspire by example. How ludicrous it would be to tell my children, both my own and those who would fill my classroom, to follow their wildest dreams if I had never had the courage to do so myself.

            Ludicrous is a very fun word. But it does not describe who I am, or who I want to be. There are a lot of things I don’t know, things I’m still trying to piece together. Including but not limited to: who I am, what I want to do, where I want to be, what I’m trying to find. And while I’m striving to answer these questions, the last thing I want is to get so caught up in them that I forget to live. I don’t want to get lost amidst the anxious need to have all the bubbles filled in, all my choices made.

            And so I’ve come to at least one small conclusion: that I want to leave pieces of myself all over the world. One day far from now I want to be able to relish in all the places I’ve lived and loved, all the people who I gave a piece of myself to along the way.

            I don’t want just one place or one group of people to feel like home. I want to see home everywhere. I want to see love everywhere. And there I go again, wanting, wanting, wanting. What can I say? I guess I’m needy.