Last week, Brussels suffered from a massive terrorist attack, leaving 30 people dead and 200 injured. If anything has been made clear about these horrific recurring acts, it's that terrorism can happen anywhere -- a concert venue in Paris, a marathon in Boston, a funeral in Baghdad, a skyscraper in New York. There is a crushing sense of loss and concern every time, but soon afterwards, people panic and quickly point fingers to find who is to blame.

An irrational fear of outsiders stems from this panic, and for this reason among others, Americans tend not to travel, or travel less compared to other nationalities. The mediatized discourses on terrorism often oversimplifies the phenomenon and politics of terrorism. What is happening is contemporary terrorism is keeping people from traveling because of the fear of being somewhere not safe. Although this is valid and very much true in some cases, there is no place on Earth where one can truly guarantee safety. Domestic or abroad, people create stereotypes about other cultures when little to no effort is put into understanding how others live and what their worldviews are.

By traveling, people foster acceptance and understanding to expose the falseness of these stereotypes.

It is important to be smart and cautious when traveling, but shutting yourself off from the world will only create naiveté. Contrary to the popular belief that only 10 percent of Americans have passports, the facts actually indicate about 42 percent of Americans hold passports. Still, it is rare to find Americans overseas traveling and going abroad to foreign lands; driving to one of our contiguous northern or southern neighbors seems to be the extent of traveling abroad for a good majority of passport-holding Americans.

Not everyone can afford to travel, or has the time, but we can’t just leave it up to our government to end the war on terrorism. As Americans, we have a responsibility now more than ever to break down the racial, cultural and stereotype-based obstacles that stand to divide us. To become citizens of the world, it is our duty to know and understand other cultures by having the willingness to immerse ourselves and approach global problems with an open mind. Terrorism may never end, but what can end is the hatred and fear that permeates our country about people we do not understand.

Traveling creates compassion and trust for one another. The problem is when people lack compassion and trust to begin with, fear sinks in and dictates our desire to travel. Qualities of empathy are created when people travel, and this empathy is essential to eliminating fear of cultures and people we are not familiar with.

It's the people who go abroad, who experience firsthand the difference between the United States and other countries, who return either with an appreciation for what we have or what we don't; these are the people who have a knowledge of the world that yields empathy. No longer do they view others through the eyes of an ethnocentric American, but of someone who knows what it is like to be an outsider. We must create global communities and connections, not hide behind the idea that we are safe within our own borders.