”Time Heals All Wounds”

”The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone. Time heals almost everything.”

I often hear of people giving bereaved people advice similar to “you just need some time, after all ‘time heals all wounds.’” It is as if these well-meaning people are saying: “Just sit back and in time you’ll no longer have the sadness, anguish, yearning, guilt, anger, and fear you’re feeling now. They’ll fade away, and you’ll be fine.” Wow! What an interesting concept! But wait a minute, that approach to grieving raises a couple of questions. First, how long is “some time” – two months, one year, two years, five years? The second question is why doesn’t this apply to the rest of our lives? After all, we have to look for a new job, search for the right house, study to get through school. Even if we want to win the lottery, we still have to buy the ticket. We have to take the initiative to do something to cause something else to happen. Is grief different? Can it really be true that time alone is enough for grief to go away? I don’t think so…

Time teaches us to look into our past from a different perspective. The moment when something traumatic happens, we always feel like we are never going to get out of this horrible situation. Our conscience is paralyzed at this moment, unable to provide any healthy solution. Sometimes, we just can’t control our overwhelming waves of negative emotions. For days we can’t eat, sleep, or think properly. However, as time passes, we gradually understand that “the show must go on”; we have to pick ourselves up and keep going. We start looking at life through a more intelligent and practical perspective and we realize that slowly, that pain is starting to fade away.

It is difficult to maintain the same intensity of emotions throughout life, regardless of what they are. We are humans and our emotions/mentality never stays at the same level; it’s just not possible. Our emotions are constantly changing, depending on the situations and the environments we are exposed to. So, it’s pretty much impossible to keep that same intensity of emotions, for any of those “hard” times everyone experiences in life. I think we can all remember a time where we cried for days and nights, but every day, it got a little bit easier. My mantra is while times can be tough and everyone goes through different things, this can be universally said: each day everything gets easier and time heals everything.