Being in your twenties feels terrible anymore. Sure, when our parents were in their twenties it was easier to get jobs, houses, educations, and it was easier to pay them off. Sometimes we keep trying to “make it” as adults by being the successful, driven, achieving people our parents are proud of. It is the American dream to “adult,” basically; to have bills to pay and be able to pay them easily without worry, to file taxes and to own property, or maybe invest in the stock market, or get a dog. But in our big push to “adult”, I think we let go of these years.

Your twenties are the last years where it’s acceptable to be careless, to make reckless decisions, as well as to be eager and spontaneous. Not saying we can’t all achieve some of these things later in life, but it certainly becomes increasingly more difficult to break away from careers, lifestyles and families. It’s not so easy to road trip with your friends to raves in your thirties. When you’re in your forties you might have to sacrifice backpacking across Europe for three months to pay for your spouse’s’ medical bills, the mortgage, or your children’s schooling. Who knows if our economy will even allow for a reasonable retirement age?

This is why now’s the time. There will never be another time when we have the time, the energy and the opportunity to go see the world. This is the time to meet new people, to experience cultures and lifestyles. I encourage anyone open to understanding, with any desire to discover themselves or the world, to find a way to travel to new places alone at

Casey Smith for The Criterion

least once in their twenties. Traveling alone gives you infinite time to enjoy and ponder life while you’re on a journey that you, and you alone, get to create. While traveling with friends and family, you may have to compromise experiences, time allotments, or itineraries in order to please everyone. You may not get the opportunity nor the freedom to sit and enjoy coffee while taking in your surroundings or stopping to visit with locals you meet. But traveling alone opens all of these doors.

You will be compelled to make your own friends, to start conversations you’d be uncomfortable starting back home. You will be obligated to understand languages, art, food and religion that is not your own. You will be made to see yourself as a piece in a part of the world previously unknown. And I’d like to think that these experiences are really what it’s all about: to find what humanity is and how we understand it. Being this young in a world as complex and complicated as ours poses an opportunity for us to try to see and learn as much as possible. It is how we are going to be able to understand ourselves and the world around us. It’s becoming self-aware, independent, empathetic and enlightened by what there is to know. No amount of adulting will be more important than the opportunity to experience this firsthand.

So, go see the world. Spin a globe and stop it with your finger. Go to that spot. Go somewhere you’ve always wanted to go, or somewhere you’ve never heard of. Save up and get a plane ticket, go for longer than just a week. There are more resources than ever now to make it affordable like Hopper, Airbnb, Turo and more. Ask yourself: if not now, when? And then ask yourself what excuses you keep making that are holding you back from experiencing travel.

Make time for yourself and make time for the rest of humanity in these years. Traveling will influence how you see and shape the world, and how you see and shape yourself.