Seeing the world is more important than you think.
“Traveling” doesn’t necessarily mean packing a large suitcase for a three-week European excursion from Italy to Spain. Traveling can mean packing up your car and driving two hours north to a friend’s lake house in a new state or town. Traveling is the simple act of moving your body from one location to another, whether you’ve been to that place before or not. Traveling is a time for learning, exploring, and self-healing.
It is important to set aside days in your busy schedule to wander. Long weekends or banked vacation days are secret keys to using up extended periods of time to travel and avoid missing work days. Traveling isn’t for everybody, but it is a passion for most people. So the question is, are you one of those people?
Traveling makes a person more worldly.
The world that we live in today allows us to fly across the globe in a day or two. From Boston, you can fly to Europe in six hours or you can fly to Japan in 14 hours. Airlines are becoming cheaper and cheaper and travel is becoming a more popular activity. The first time I traveled out of the U.S. was my sophomore year of high school. I was fortunate enough to attend a weeklong trip to France that my school hosted every other year. This was the start of a very expensive addiction. Since then I have saved a lot of my money and put it towards trips of different varieties. I once heard someone say “spending money on travel is more sentimental than spending money on material goods.” Items and goods will lose your interest or go out of style, but the memories and experiences of traveling to Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany or paragliding in the Swiss Alps definitely will never get old.
You will make so many new friends when you travel. I’ve always told myself that the quickest way to get to know someone is to book a trip with them. I absolutely love heading somewhere new with people I barely know. It sounds scary, but you find that people who travel together gravitate towards each other for comfort on your journey, and in turn you get to know each other rather fast. I’ve made some awesome friends through exploration and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Travel is so good for you. As a person, you begin to grow in every direction by learning new languages, trying new foods, seeing historical monuments, and forming new relationships with locals. Traveling is a natural cleanse to your soul. The world is so big and the cultures are so real. We are all so used to the American culture, that when we set foot in a new country for the first time, it’s a complete shell shock. Personally, my biggest culture shock was spending two weeks in Japan and trying to figure out how to use their computerized toilets or simply ask for an ice cream cone from the local vendor. But language barriers can always be broken with a smile and a simple hello.
My advice to you is to get out there. Blow your money on a plane ticket or a skydiving tickets in another state. See something new, try local eats, discover local art. Go see a last minute improv show in Portland, Maine, just for fun and enjoy it. Because you deserve it.
So pack your bags and start spreading the news because it’s time to travel!
*This was originally published on alexandani.com
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