There is a quiet, almost merciful sanctuary in the age-old Urdu aphorism "Yeh waqt bhi guzar jayega"—this too shall pass. It serves as an emotional tourniquet during our darkest hours, promising that suffering is not a permanent state, that heartbreak carries an expiration date, and that even the stormiest nights eventually yield to dawn. It offers the ultimate consolation: comfort through transience. Yet, a sharper, far more unsettling truth lurks just behind that comforting curtain: the solace lies in knowing this time will pass; the tragedy is that time itself is passing.
The Double-Edged Blade of Impermanence
When we invoke transience to survive a difficult phase, we treat time as an adversary to be endured rather than a gift to be inhabited. We fold our hands, lower our heads, and wait for the clock to bleed out the pain. But time does not discriminate between our misery and our joy. It moves at the exact same relentless pace whether we are weeping in the dark or celebrating in the sun.
In our eagerness to escape a painful chapter, we inadvertently wish away the very currency of our existence. We treat days like pages in a heavy book, flipping through them rapidly just to reach a lighter scene, forgetting that the book itself is finite.
The Sand in the Hourglass
Consider the hourglass. When you are stuck in traffic, mourning a loss, or enduring a season of stagnation, you stare at the top bulb, waiting desperately for the sand to run out. You take comfort in watching the grains fall, knowing the weight will eventually shift.
The tragedy, however, is not the sand at the bottom; it is the narrowing neck in the middle.
Every grain that falls to free you from a bad day is a grain you will never retrieve for a good one. Time is not a patient host waiting for us to figure things out. It is a silent thief that steals from us even while we are thanking it for taking away our pain. The issue is never merely that a bad phase is passing—the issue is that life itself is slipping through the cracks while we wait for the conditions to be perfect.
Living Beyond the Wait
To live with depth requires holding two opposing realities at once: honouring the comfort of impermanence without falling into the trap of passive waiting.
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Stop treating life as a prelude: Pain, uncertainty, and grief are not interruptions to your life; they are part of the terrain. Waiting for the "bad time" to pass before you start truly living is an invitation to miss the entire journey.
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Observe without detaching completely: Let the awareness that time moves quickly sharpen your presence. If joy is brief, drink it deeply. If pain is temporary, feel it fully without letting it numb your awareness to the beauty still existing on the margins.
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Reclaim the present moment: The clock will continue its steady, unyielding march regardless of your emotional state. The question is not how much time you have left to endure, but how intentionally you choose to inhabit the second you are in right now.
Time will inevitably pass—that is its nature and its promise. The real mastery lies in ensuring that as the hours slip away, they do not take your capacity for presence along with them.
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