'Time heals all wounds' - Does it really?

We sit down with our families, friends, brothers, sisters and so on after being hurt, after a bad day or an experiencing an unfortunate event and we will always hear the people around us say 'Time heals all wounds'. We all know that when time passes by after some hardship in our lives our bodies seem to go into a reset mode. This usually happens by the very works of time itself. We realise, accept and naturally move on. The question here is, do the actual hands of a clock itself have the ultimate power to heal the pain we experienced on that bad day, or after that terrible thing he or she said? Or is there some other power greater than a time piece, perhaps a power we can find within ourselves that urges us to mend the pain?

Time is the very essence of what our lives are all about, time monitors almost everything. Leaving 30 minutes early to beat traffic to make it on time to work at 9am, making sure that by 10.30pm you're in bed to wake up knowing your body had a full 8 hours sleep. Our whole daily schedule runs on time and time frames. How about looking at it the other way? Like, time is a healer, time can fix things and with every tick time can make your problems disappear. Why has time now become a factor in moving forward with life's adversities?

Joel Osteen is a highly influential pastor who preaches about moving forward, closing doors and letting go. From both a religious perspective and personal view, Joel states himself in one of his services: "I'm forgiving the person that hurt me. I'm letting go of the disappointments. I'm letting the old doors close so I can walk through the new doors You have in front of me!". Ultimately what one can take away from this is that moving forward begins with you. This can be done within a time frame but it all begins with you choosing to move forward from any adversity and take that action to heal yourself and rectify those issues, rather than waiting on time to correct these for you.

Dr Bernie Siegel is an American writer of healing and moving forward. Before he began writing he was better known for his role as a surgeon in cancer treatments. He offers insight into "Self-induced healing". Meaning that healing begins with oneself and coming to terms with the issue, accepting and taking necessary action to move forward. He lives by this term and promotes this throughout his array of books on meditation, healing and his general lifestyle.

Time is what makes us, we can tend to take the time we have with others, with ourselves and with life for granted. We will often say "I have plenty of time to get to that", "I'll worry about that later" etc. What we sometimes fail to realise is that time does pass by quickly, sometimes without us realising. In that case, why should we sit around and wait for time to heal us when we can use that time after a disappointment, heartache, bad day and more to take charge of any situation we may be going through and take measures to move forward and mend ourselves?


Written by:

Victoria Rose Damos
La Trobe University
Media and Communications (Journalism)