Some would argue that it’s the most important thing you can do. Others say it’s not.
Travel is part of our human DNA, and part of our daily life.
Whether physically, in books, or in movies, we travel all the time, and when you have the chance to go to a foreign country, discover new things, and learn about a different culture, you realize why travel is so important in life.
Top 10 Reasons Why Travel Is Important
1. We Better Understand Our Human History
Many of the greatest discoveries in human history were made by travelers. From exploring the world to discovering new species of plants and animals, travel has led to most of the major breakthroughs in understanding our planet.
Without travelers, we’d know much less about these things than we do today and we’d probably still believe the earth is flat.
Explorers like Marco Polo and Columbus opened new routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas. Scientists like Charles Darwin traveled around the world to study different plants and animals.
Many who traveled brought back many important discoveries that have changed our understanding of the world today.
History surrounds us everywhere we go, whether on a trip or a simple walk down the street. Nowadays, we can visit museums and read books to learn more about the history of the country we visit.
2. Traveling Satisfies Our Need for Discovery
Exploration not only helps us better understand our surroundings and learn about new cultures and places.
Humans have always been explorers. Since the beginning of time, we’ve always wanted to know what lies on the other side of the hill. We’ve always been curious about the unknown.
The more we learn about our planet, the better prepared we’re for the future – especially when it comes to environmental issues like climate change, conservation and wildlife protection.
We are always on the lookout for a new experience, whether it’s a new land, a new species, new ideas, new culture, or a new way of life. We’ve moved from caves to huts to houses to skyscrapers.
We’ve conquered the seas and the skies and learned to live with animals and plants. The more we learn, the better we can understand our planet and the universe beyond. The unknown makes our life seem limitless, and traveling increases our curiosity – we just can’t stop exploring and discovering!
3. It Improves Our Health
Getting out of our comfort zone doesn’t only reduce stress, it’s also great for our physical health. Travelers are more prone to illness and stress because they’re having to physically move all the time.
The more you travel, the greater your risk of getting sick from something you may have never encountered. However, travel has also improved our health by helping us become more aware of the different medicines and remedies available in different parts of the world.
For example, explorer James Cook and Edward Jenner developed the first vaccine against smallpox in 1796. This discovery made it possible to vaccinate against smallpox, without which many people would have died from the disease.
It’s also been shown that traveling to a new place can have numerous health benefits.
It helps us relax, which is important for our well-being and mental health. It can also help us feel less stressed and more positive about life in general.
4. It’s Good for Our Self-Development
Travel has helped us develop as people in many ways. It’s taught us to be more open, kind and considerate of others. We’ve gained a new perspective on how people live in different places around the world, and we’ve learned that not all people are the same.
We’ve learned to adapt outside our comfort zone and interact with different people from all over the world.
Overall, we’ve become more inclusive because we’re now aware of how diverse the world is and how many different cultures there are.
Traveling makes us realize that we should collaborate and be open to different people and new cultures.
By getting out of our comfort zone and gathering travel experience, we relieve stress, create new memories, and learn to approach life in a different way. It’s a new experience for our mind and body, additionally it helps our mental health.
5. It improves our mental health
Whether we travel for business or pleasure, our minds are stimulated by the sights and experiences in a new place. Gaining travel experience also help us in our daily life because we learn to adapt quickly and thus respond better to a stressful situation.
Traveling allows us to exercise different parts of our brain, which is important because the brain is like a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly to stay healthy. This way, our mind stays sharp.
6. Traveling Fosters Richer Education
If we didn’t travel, we’d still believe that the earth is apartment, and we wouldn’t know what a different country is like.
We wouldn’t discover new cultures,we wouldn’t understand how and why other people live differently in their everyday life, we wouldn’t be informed about the latest news on the other side of the world and we wouldn’t make new friends from a different country.
The education and information we receive from various sources such as books, television, radio, and the Internet are all a result of globalization. Without new things to learn, our education would be limited and we wouldn’t have access to the latest news about what’s happening in other countries or regions of the world.
Travel is educational. From basic words in the local language to food to history, geography or politics, travel constantly improves our education.
7. We Gain Inspiration
When you travel, you explore different places, new cultures, and natural wonders. You’ve the opportunity to see what’s out there and experience it for yourself.
There’s nothing like experiencing another culture and seeing another place to spark the imagination.
When I was in New Zealand, I’d so many new ideas that I even created a board game about traveling, which could be played with another person or several players. While researching for the game, I learned a lot about North America and cities like New York in the United States, South America, Costa Rica, and all the places I never had the chance to visit.
8. It Improves Our Creativity
Travel improves memory and creativity.
There are several studies that prove the mental benefits of travel. It’s important that we keep our an open mind and learn to think outside the box.
Our brains are made up of billions of nerve cells. These nerve cells form circuits throughout the brain that allow us to do everything from learning a new language to build new memories.
Every time we learn a new thing, these neural circuits in our brain are strengthened, making it easier for us to remember things in the future and build memories.
Traveling – seeing new sights, visiting new places, meeting new people – causes your brain to build these neural connections, making us smarter and more creative than if we stay at home.
Travel has definitely helped humanity become smarter and find faster solutions.
9. It Makes Eating More Interesting and Enjoyable
If you’d to eat the same food every day, what would it be?
In the past, people could only eat the food they grew themselves or bought locally, when opportunities to travel were limited.
Today, the food choices are incredibly diverse and plentiful because we can travel to many different places and bring back new foods from each place. We can also communicate and share recipes with people from all over the world.
If you’d to go back a few centuries, without modern means of transportation and communication, would you like the selection of food?
The world is so diverse when it comes to food, and each country has its own specialty. If you’re interested in local cuisine, you can take cooking classes where you’ll learn some basic techniques and recipes that people there have been using for years. Also, you’ll learn about the culture and traditions of the locals when they tell you about it during your stay at their home or during your culinary tour.
10. Travel Connects Us
Mankind has been traveling since the beginning of time. People have always moved around the world in search of better living conditions, sources of food and opportunities to earn money.
After all, we share the same blue planet.
Regardless of what divides us, there’s more that unites us than what divides us. The world is big, yet small enough that we can connect with almost anyone through social media or in person. This is how we connect and our minds become enlightened.
The Importance of Travel on an Individual Level
As mentioned in my previous posts, traveling on an individual level today isn’t a necessity like food and water, but it’s worthwhile.
Traveling promotes new memories, makes us learn new things, discover different country, gives us the opportunity to learn different language, make new friends, helps us work on our inner peace, and sometimes it makes us a new person. And the most important thing, it’s helped us build the diverse society we live in today.
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