Travel is key because, if you do it slowly enough with eyes open, it shows you what universal properties human societies tend to have in all their incarnations and just how beautiful nature, history, art and other things lying outside of the daily grind are. Importantly, particularly if you are young, it distances you from the familiar environment, society, family and friends, and thus releases your inhibitions and allows you to grow in new ways. Done right, travel is novel experience - definitely not endless flights and generic hotels. After your first foreign rendezvous, sunrise, sunset, new way of cooking a familiar ingredient, new instrument, sport, museum, language or revolution, "home" may just seem ... dull.