At 11 o’clock in the night we searched for the Mexican in the dark. We just didn’t seem able to find the Mexican. After driving around the block twice, I called my friend to tell him that we couldn’t find the Mexican.
That’s when he gave the secret away. After dinner at the Bella Casa, we decided to go to the Mexican restaurant in Westdene in Bloemfontein. The general idea was to have an evening closer whiskey (I wasn’t driving). I was particularly looking forward to seeing Steve the Scottish owner of the Mexican and tasting one of his top recommendations, Singletons whiskey.
My friend called from the other side of the road and with a chuckle told me that the Mexican restaurant and pub had been knocked down and blasted away together with a speakeasy club, hardware and church in the corner some time back. Even in the dark you could see that the entire block was flattened out. It is being temporarily re-used for parking for the other nightclubs across the road until the new shopping development starts on the vacant site.
I was not only shocked to see the disappearance of the Mexican but saddened because it held several memories. My friend told me that Steve, the owner, had decided to not open another Mexican restaurant and had rather tried his hand at selling property, which my friend mentioned, he was doing very well at.
I have been away for about six months and realised then with the block of the Mexican having been demolished and giving way to a new shopping centre just how fast time flies. In your own environment, time seems to go at a steady pace. But when you visit other towns after a few months or even a year, you see how much change has taken place. I have often been been amazed by what I’ve seen in my own home town of Kalk Bay and the nearby town of Fish Hoek in Cape Town, along the southern peninsula. After a year, the stores that I might have seen start out in January have close before the end of the year. New stores have started up. The retail stores that supply daily necessities have continued to remain robust even after many years.
The rapidity of time also makes you conscious of those things that you may put off because you don’t feel that you have the necessary skills or experience to make a go of it. You may put off other important projects in your life because you think you’ll be able to do it at some other time in the future.
But as we’ve all been told, time waits for no one.
It’s only by taking small steps and actions daily that we can complete the larger tasks and projects in our lives. A university degree, an annual vacation, a new hobby such as playing the electrical guitar, a skill we’ve always streamed of doing such as ballet or learning French, or coming up with an idea for a product or service that can be turned into a viable and ongoing business.
If you are conscious of and respect the march of time in your life, and have a burning desire to create meaning in your life through developing plans to make your idea a reality, then why don’t you find out here how you can do it.
