On November 9th, I was having a tough time. It had been the longest I’d gone without seeing my family since I started college. This was especially weighing me down because my oldest brother was enduring chemotherapy. I just wanted to be home. I was so overwhelmed with guilt and frustration that I couldn’t be home with my family that I put myself into a negative mindset. I just wanted to pack up my things and leave.

I talked to my mom about it, she told me to stop being crazy. I can’t just leave school in the middle of the semester. After assuring me that everything and everyone was fine, she suggested I take a trip to Disneyland (because what better way to cheer up).

I unfortunately had no one to go with so I had to take an uber to Disneyland by myself. What I wasn’t expecting was the uber driver to cheer me up more than the Disneyland trip itself.

I got in the car and after the little get to know you talk about where we both are from, I noticed he had a picture of Mother Mary and Saint Christopher (the patron saint of travelers) on his dashboard. I complimented him on his pictures and told him I was Catholic.

We began to have a discussion on religion. I spoke about how I was born and raised Roman Catholic and he asked me about my experience so far at Azusa Pacific, because it is an Evangelical Christian university.

I told him I had been having a positive experience so far. Like Catholicism, Evangelicalism is another denomination of Christianity. There is not a large difference between Catholicism and Evangelicalism. Amongst other things Catholicism does pay more attention to Mother Mary, the saints and has a lot of older tradition based worship that originated from Rome over 3000 years ago.

He expressed his concerns about the other denominations of Christianity because of personal experience with his son. His son was raised Catholic but was baptized into a different denomination of Christianity when he was 18. He stated he has had continuous problems with his son because of his criticism directed toward the Catholic faith.

He said they would get into arguments about hell, not going to the same church anymore, and other religious topics. One of the arguments got so heated that he didn’t talk to his son for a few days. I found this hard to understand.

Although the two denominations have much more similarities than differences, people can focus on the differences in a negative manner and act hurtful towards others. I told him I found his situation puzzling. In my mind, Christianity is Christianity. Denominations are formed for small differences between the way of worship and specific beliefs that have to do with Christianity and people's interpretations of the written word. He was telling me he does not like his son’s religion and what it had turned him into. I then asked him if I could express my opinion.

I told him looking down on a religion strictly because of different beliefs is putting down your own religion. As a fellow Catholic, I don’t want people to assume all Catholics dislike other religions because they don’t practice their beliefs in the same way as we do.

I told him religion is not about how you worship or specific beliefs, it’s about dedicating yourself to God and trying becoming a better person by living in his image. My grandma always said it is not about memorizing and knowing all the verses in the bible, it is the actions you perform to serve others and doing good when no one is watching.

There is a lot of hate in this world. Too much of it has to do with religious differences. But something to remember is: it's not about what your belief may be about what of you think may be wrong or right. It is about who you are to yourself and how you treat other people.

Our conversation on religion ended on a positive note. He told me he will talk to his son about his issues. This conversation led to other conversations about life. One in particular was about cancer.

I told him my brother was diagnosed with cancer before I left for college. After he apologized, He told me about his personal experience about cancer. Both of his parents passed away from cancer within the same year.

He said he did not handle it well at first. As most people would, he got very upset and angry. But then he told me something that completely changed my perspective on how I need to handle my situation.

He said “Some people get sad. Some people get mad. Some people wallow in self-pity. I knew was guilty of that, but then I flipped my mindset. I began to become humble. Unlike my Uber driver, I still had the opportunity to be humbled by the fact that I was still blessed with my parents presence in my life. I was humbled at the fact that I could spend the time with them. Death and family crisis is never easy but I used my energy on being humble rather than being upset and wanting sympathy.”

I realized this is what I was doing. I was burying myself in self-pity and making this situation about me instead of being positive and supportive of my family during this stressful episode in our lives. I needed to cultivate and cope with the situation. Instead of putting my energy towards being sad, I began to put it towards thinking about how blessed I am. I needed to become humble and put my brother and his struggles ahead of my own selfish needs. Who knew a valuable lesson in life was included in that Uber fee I paid for my trip to Disneyland.