Coincidence, or Fate?
Many years later,
I still think about that night.
And I still ask myself:
Are some things
really just coincidence?
Or is there truly
some invisible arrangement
within life itself?
At the time,
I still owned another motel in Phoenix.
My younger brother had been managing it for me.
Later,
because the motel in Dallas was much larger,
we decided to sell the Phoenix property
and invest everything into Texas.
After the motel was sold,
my brother stayed behind for a few extra weeks
to help the new owners with the transition.
Only after everything was fully settled
did he finally prepare to leave Phoenix
and drive to Dallas.
That day,
he drove for hours
across endless highways.
What filled his mind
was the thought of a new beginning.
At the time,
all of us believed:
Dallas
would become our family’s new hope.
That evening,
my brother finally entered the city of Dallas.
Using the address I had given him,
he drove back and forth along the streets,
searching for the motel.
And then,
he finally saw it.
Only—
what he saw
was not a new motel.
It was a fire.
The entire building
was being swallowed by flames.
Even now, after so many years,
I still cannot forget that image.
A man who had just left Phoenix,
carrying hope for the future,
driving all the way to a new city—
and the very first thing he saw
was the family business
burning before his eyes.
Sometimes,
life feels like a kind of enormous irony.
You believe you are walking toward a new beginning,
without realizing
that fate
has already lit the fire
on the other side.
Later, I often wondered:
What if my brother had left one day earlier?
Or one day later?
What if the fire
had not happened that very night?
Are some things
really just accidents?
And yet,
what I understand the least
was never the fire itself.
It was people.
I chose that motel
because the location was excellent.
It stood directly across from
Texas Instruments.
From an investment perspective,
I had actually chosen the right place.
I simply was not wise enough
to see through the darkness in people.
I trusted too deeply that:
systems would protect good people.
That laws would uphold justice.
That if you had done nothing wrong,
in the end,
fairness would prevail.
Only later did I understand:
Some people study
not how to run a motel—
but how to exploit
human trust itself.
And some systems
do not necessarily protect
the people who were harmed.
That fire
eventually spread into the courtroom.
Into the insurance companies.
Into the world of power and利益.
And for the first time,
I began to see:
Some fires,
even after you leave the scene,
continue to burn.
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