Living in our society, it’s easy to lose sight of what's happening around us.

We have our routines. Two packets of sugar in black coffee, don’t forget your mid-term paper, leave at 9:00 and make it to class at 9:30. Say “It’s finally cold” to the stranger at the cross walk, but don’t say anything else. We get up, we work, we sleep, and then repeat.

Sometimes, it can narrow our mindset to see and do the same things every day; The same people, in the same places. There’s not always very much variety in the way we live our lives.

It’s not bad to have a routine, but it can be confining if that pattern is never broken. If we don’t step outside of ourselves and our daily schedule, then we limit ourselves to one way of life. The bedtimes, the diet, and the homework at 12:00 before meeting your friend at 1:00 every Tuesday and Thursday.

I didn’t see this until I visited Guatemala, and there I found an entirely different routine. I saw kids eating a frozen banana on wooden sticks at 11:00 p.m. in the road. There were McDonalds that looked like nice restaurants, where you have to wait to be seated. Driving was impossible if you tried to go by a rulebook. Color was everywhere, on the walls, the ground, the road.

I learned about a culture when I went. I discovered the people and the language. It was beautiful.

But it was also hard. There were kids living on the streets. A mudslide devastated a nearby village; Houses ruined and lives altered.

There’s a side like this to every place, and it opened my eyes. Suddenly I could see, and I wanted to be more active about diminishing poverty and pulling together with my fellow counterparts to make a change.

The routine has to break at some point, and then a new way can be seen.

A different life can be made. Better things can be done. The viewpoint becomes wider than just the walls of your apartment and the University you attend.

It reaches beyond the state lines and it offers a new understanding of the world where culture meets wisdom.

When we step outside of our own lives we can see the world so much clearer. Our decisions are then based off of a knowledge of the world we wouldn’t have had before.

This is why we need to travel.