“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” –Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain was a brilliant man. Of course, you’d expect nothing less from the bloke who authored the Great American Novel. However, his genius is derived from more than just his ability to concoct colorful characters and compelling plots. Twain traveled. Extensively. It was traveling that helped him in writing some of his most well-known novels, such as Innocents Abroad and Tramps Abroad as well as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which takes place up and down the Mississippi River. But as Twain said himself, travel is more than just vacation or even the process of seeing something new. Travel changes you in a way that makes you a more whole and cultured person, ridding you of “prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of that?

There truly is nothing like travel when it comes to renewal, garnering knowledge and perspective, and forging ties that bind people across states, continents, and the world. Additionally, there are so many countries, economies, and cultures that depend on travel, not just economically but artistically and philosophically, that to stop traveling is to abandon them to almost inevitable disruption and degeneration. Furthermore, it’s these cultures and philosophies that aren’t printed in your weekly newspaper or displayed regularly on the television. How much can you really say you know about Indian culture without visiting that expansive country and experiencing all it has to offer?

Of course I can’t imagine there are many people who would necessarily disagree that travel is a fundamental part of growing as a person, and many, I’m sure, would certainly take advantage of travel given the means or the opportunity. It really comes down to when would be the best time to travel in your life. For most, it seems to be after retirement. Once you retire, you no longer have to worry about taking leave from your job, and (hopefully) you’ve saved enough to be able to treat yourself to some rejuvenation. But should you really wait until you’re in your 60’s? By then, life should have already given you newfound perspective and exhausted you to the point where you’d much prefer to veg on the couch and finally enjoy that television that cost you several pay checks. The last thing you’d want to do is sit on a plane for nine hours and walk miles a day through the streets of Paris. The best time to travel is now—when you’re young and able to take full advantage of all travel has to offer.

As a teen, you’re much more susceptible to close-mindedness and selfishness, as your world basically consists of just school, friends, and family. Most are aware that children are starving to death in Africa, or civilians are being bombed in the Middle East, but as that doesn’t directly affect us, we don’t pay it much attention. When you travel as a teen, you have a greater ability to fully soak up the culture and perspective that visiting a different country makes so readily available. Perhaps even more important, however, is the fact that teens are actually willing to take risks—an important trait when it comes to exploring something completely out of your comfort zone.

As teens we are less inclined to look at the consequences, than we are to look at the reward. As such, we have a tendency to be quite the thrill seekers. Perhaps that’s why we find the need to partake in illegal substance abuse or drink alcohol. The rewards of such endeavors include a good time, and, for us, that far outweighs the risk of getting caught or seriously injured, or worse. This is bad. But the fact that we live for the excitement of doing something new and even threatening is not what’s detrimental. It’s what we do with this type of thinking that’s considered so abysmal. In fact, this need for adventure is even necessary for us to muster the courage to go off on our own to college and then the big, bad world. We even look forward to it—well at least I certainly do. It’s the bad things we do with this power (and, yes, I do consider it as such) that creates the illusion of teens=dangerous. But we can certainly do more with it. We can travel. We can experience something new that turns us into better people. (Make travel your anti-drug!)

In the October issue of National Geographic, David Dobbs wrote an article on how teens, though moody and impulsive, are also the most adaptable and adventurous people around.

“We all like new and exciting things,” he writes, “but we never value them more highly than we do during adolescence… [T]he hunt for sensation provides the inspiration needed to ‘get you out of the house’ and into new terrain,” writes Dobbs.

So take advantage of the fact that you’re actually willing to explore new and exciting things now. Don’t let anything stop you—not even cost. You don’t have to be a member of the Onassis family and ride around on a million dollar yacht to properly vacation. There are tons of places to go that cost nothing, if you’re willing to volunteer. Honestly, this stuff even looks amazing on college applications. So in all actuality, you’d be helping yourself out in a lot more ways than just the whole you’re-a-much-more-well-rounded-and-over-all-better-person kind of way.

Make it all possible, stretching your comfort zone if you have to. As Mark Twain so brilliantly put, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”