Around this time last year, my roommates and I were embarking on one of our many late night journeys to Flannery Market. Hoping to leave with a snack (or 12), instead what we got that night was a priceless life lesson.

For some reason at 12:30 a.m. on a Tuesday we decided we needed to make brownies. Like, our lives depended on these brownies. We had the mix, we had a sketchy communal oven located in a laundry room to use, we just needed one more vital ingredient: eggs.

Usually, for whatever reason, Flan Market was stocked with eggs… which is weird because everything else there is your average, late night college snack: chips, Oreos, popcorn, etc. We’d always pass the eggs thinking “…who ever needs these?” After all, Flan Market is only open in the wee hours of the night. Who eats eggs at night? Nevertheless, we were confident that we’d find eggs, lots of them, in Flannery O’Connor Market that night.

We sauntered in towards the refrigerated section and reached out hurriedly for the anticipated carton of eggs.

Only… they weren’t there.

We were outraged. Ridiculously so. We must have voiced our concerns a little too loudly and frankly, because something prompted the cashier to carefully lay out the words I will never forget: “When you want eggs, you ain’t got eggs. And when you got eggs, you ain’t want ‘em.”

And our jaws dropped because what seemed like the least likely person in the least likely place at the least likely time said the most POWERFUL thing. When you want something, you don’t have it. But when you have it, you don’t want it.

Yes, this is a silly example, but the message is real. Too often we long for things that we do not have and maybe cannot have, while losing sight of what’s actually in front of us.

Sometimes I find myself wanting my day to be better because a bunch of trivial things went wrong. What I don’t see, at times like these, is everything I do have that I should be thankful for: I go to a college that I love. I have a family who roots for me no matter what. I have friends so amazing that they’ll do things like laugh at my jokes even when they’re not funny. I should not need to want much else.

But as humans, I suppose, we’re wired to want stuff. Sometimes it’s a car or a better day or sometimes it’s eggs when the late night market’s all out. I think though, to soften these wants, it may be helpful to remind ourselves of what we do have already, and to be thankful of those things. Because maybe one day we won’t have that vital thing or person we took for granted we'd always have— and we will realize that when it was there, we could have appreciated it a lot more.

So take a stranger's simple words of wisdom and hold onto them. They're guaranteed to lend you a smile, if not some telling advice as well:

When you want eggs, you ain’t got eggs. And when you got eggs, you ain’t want ‘em.