Full Circle

One night I was playing blackjack at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas.

Two men at the table didn’t like the way I was playing and began making rude and racial

remarks. I asked them why they would speak to me that way when they didn’t even know who I

was.

One of them replied, “I don’t care who you are.”

Rather than argue, I calmly stood up and went to speak with a security guard I knew. He came

back to the table and asked the two men to leave for the night.

As they stood up, one of them asked the guard, “Who is this guy that he can have us kicked out

of the hotel?”

The guard simply replied, “It doesn’t matter.”

Two years later I returned to the Hard Rock.

I parked at the valet and walked inside to the bar. As I stood there waiting for a drink, a man

walked up beside me.

We looked at each other for a moment.

Then he said, “You’re the guy that had me kicked out of here.”

It was the same man from the blackjack table.

This time there was no hostility. We laughed about the past and ended up having a drink

together.

Looking back, I realized something about that moment.

Our lives had come full circle.

What had once been conflict had become reconciliation. The same place, the same people, but a

completely different outcome.

It reminded me that even the uncomfortable moments in our lives can later reveal their purpose.