It doesn’t take much to have a new perspective on the people around you. For me, this happened during a talk with my sister. This was after she had gone over to meet with her first boyfriend's parents. They were a very religious family, and she knew that, but even for her, it was too much. After she got home, she came and talked to me, as she couldn’t talk with our parents, and my brother wasn’t there. I was also the only one that she could talk to about random topics and listen to her, along with having a conversation about them. 

She started by asking me whether or not I believed in any religion. 

         “Hey, Cole, do you believe in any religion?”

This is a weird way to start a conversation, I thought. I replied that I didn’t. I like to believe in what is in front of me or has been proven. This lead to an hour to an hour and a half long conversation about religions that we or the people around us believe in and how they affect that person. Now, neither one of us believe in religion, even if we like their beliefs and their legends or history. Even though this was the case, there was one conclusion that we both came up with. That was, religion is a good thing for some people, it helps them get through tough times in life, and have something to place their hope in. But, there are lines that people shouldn’t cross with religion. One is that people should keep it to themselves, nobody wants people to drag them into something they don’t want to do. If someone wants to join a religion, they will seek it out themselves. 

I know this is a controversial topic, but topics regarding religion just seem to fall into the wrong place most of the time. I like to know the truth of matters before I go forward with them, and this is especially true with commitments that could change my life like joining a religion. I didn’t continue with wanting to go to church because I found out how Christianity was spread, and this works for any other religion that I could join. I want to find out what happened for it to get to the state that it is currently in. 

Even though I have said all of this, there is one lesson that I learned from that conversation that I will forever keep in my mind. That is that people have an infinite possibility of having an opinion that could either agree with yours or be the complete opposite of yours. I have thought of many thoughts in my free time and many times it comes to having something to do about differing opinions. As I look at this world that has changed so much in the past few decades, I can say that the thing that has the most influence on others is how one thinks. This connects to the changes and those connect to opinions. The one action that should be done in these situations is the same, respect the other person’s opinion.  I have learned to use this way of thinking in my life, as it helps with many different types of circumstances. Some of the more common uses that I have found are finding ways to settle an argument, or when writing an essay for one side of a topic, to rebut the other side. I have found through this that life is all about how someone perceives what’s around them, and thinks about the bigger picture of whatever circumstance they are in first.