Leaving your hometown doesn’t mean you think you’re better. It means you’re curious.

Leaving gets read as a verdict on everybody who stayed, which is where most of the guilt comes from. Wanting to see a different place is not a ranking of people, though. Small towns and big ones both hold good lives. Curiosity is its own reason, and it does not require anything back home to be wrong.

If you are planning to go, say what it is about: the school, the work, the wanting to know. Do not let it come out sounding like a review of anyone. Keep calling, keep coming back, and let them see that going and loving the place fit in the same life.