"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."
-Terry Pratchett
Discworld, the fictional universe that bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett created for his fantasy series of the same name, is nothing if not a chance to see the world differently: The imaginative universe is a flat disc carried on the backs of four elephants who are all standing on a turtle.
Discworld is described as “a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different.” That description gets at the heart of this quote, from Pratchett’s book “A Hat Full of Sky.” When you leave a place you’ve known forever and experience something new, it changes both you and that place.
You return to something familiar, but it looks different because your perspective has changed. Leaving and coming home again expands your worldview, much more than staying put ever would.
