There is a soft side to the knife of time, and what makes it soft is what also makes it sharp. When the passing of time brings us to a day of great pain – we lose a loved one, we fail at a great endeavor, or our hearts break for someone we love – the knife of time slashes a deep wound in our lives. The pain is so intense that we hyperfocus our attention on the grief and are unable to think of anything beyond it.
The complexity of time is that when it cuts you, it is simultaneously healing you. Time is always ticking. It is constantly moving forward. Even a single day after a fresh wound, we are closer to a time when the pain has subdued and what remains of the injury is just a scar. What time promises each of us is progression. When in pain, we are always moving closer toward healing, closer toward peace, closer to another sunrise, closer to a new day. The progression never stagnates.
When grief moves through us, its influence deceives us into believing that it’s more powerful than time. We can’t seem to understand how we will ever move beyond the agony, how we’ll be able to once again appreciate the joys of life, or how we’ll be able to simply walk forward without bringing what’s in the past. The grief leads us to believe that time is a ruthless monster that has walked us into a void that we’ll never find our way out of. We struggle to understand that what led us into the void is what will also pull us out of it.
In every passing moment, the healing side of time is steadfast in its promise to carry you closer to the other side of where you currently are. Though time is what cuts, it is also what heals. If you’re currently nursing a fresh wound, don’t lose faith in the power of the future. At the end of each day the sun sets, and at the beginning it rises again. Your healing happens within the number of sunsets and sunrises it takes to reach a place of restoration. Don’t rush the process. You will reach it in time. And it is a beautiful place.