‘Time Heals Everything’ Is a Lie — The Gita Tells You What Actually Does

“Just give it time. It’ll get better.”
We’ve heard this in moments of heartbreak, grief, confusion, and loss. The promise is comforting — that time is a healer, a slow-moving force that erodes suffering and restores peace. But the Bhagavad Gita offers no such comfort.

It does not endorse passive healing or delayed hope. The Gita confronts pain directly, not with false promises but with uncompromising truth. It tells us that what we call “getting better” is often a subtle illusion — a shift in habit, not a transformation of consciousness. This is not healing. It’s adjustment. And the Gita wants us to see through it. The Gita does not see time as an agent of transformation. Time does not touch the self. It merely reshapes memory, blurs sharp edges, and helps us build routines around our wounds. We begin to feel “better” because the pain becomes less visible — not because it’s gone.

In Chapter 2, Verse 16, Krishna says,
“नासतो विद्यते भावो नाभावो विद्यते सतः”
“The unreal has no existence; the real never ceases to be.”

Time can never make something unreal into something true. What appears to be healing is often just the mind adapting. But adaptation is not liberation. The human mind is incredibly adaptive — we normalize anything over time. But normalizing suffering does not mean we are free from it. We confuse the absence of reaction with the presence of peace.

When Arjuna collapses in sorrow on the battlefield, Krishna doesn’t tell him, “Give it time.” He challenges him to rise, to fulfill his dharma, and to see beyond his attachments. The Gita insists that true healing comes not from endurance of time, but from an awakening of insight. It is not about feeling better — it is about seeing more clearly. The Gita introduces the idea of titiksha — the endurance of opposites like pleasure and pain, heat and cold — without mental agitation. Endurance is not denial. It is clarity without collapse.

Krishna tells Arjuna in 2.14 that these sensations are fleeting, and one must learn to observe them without being overpowered. Most people endure suffering hoping it will end. The Gita teaches us to endure suffering with the knowledge that we are beyond it. One of the deepest teachings of the Gita is that the self (atman) is not the body or the mind — and certainly not emotions. Emotions are events. You are not the event — you are the witness.

When you say you’ve healed because a certain emotion has faded, the Gita challenges you: is your healing real, or have you just distanced yourself from the feeling?

The atman remains untouched by joy or sorrow. If your sense of well-being is tied to temporary emotional states, you are still caught in illusion. Throughout the Gita, Krishna cautions against a restless, reactive mind. This is the manas — the undisciplined mind that swings with desire, grief, and memory. Such a mind is always bound, regardless of how much time has passed.

Peace cannot come to a mind that is constantly shifting with time. Only through atma-jnana — knowledge of the Self — can the mind become still. Real healing, then, does not arrive with the clock. It arrives with awareness. Detachment (vairagya) in the Gita is often misunderstood as emotional coldness. In truth, it is sharp clarity — a recognition of what is real and what is not.

When you detach, you don’t stop feeling. You stop clinging. With time, we may loosen our grip on pain. But the Gita urges us to release our attachment through insight, not fatigue. Letting go is not a product of waiting. It is the fruit of realization. Finally, the most challenging truth: the atman — the true Self — does not need healing, because it cannot be harmed. It is changeless, eternal, and beyond all material experiences.

In Chapter 2, Verse 23, Krishna states:
“Weapons cannot cut it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, wind cannot dry it.”

The self you believe was broken is not the real self. The ego, the role, the story — these are what suffer. The Gita does not offer a bandage for these illusions. It offers a sword to cut through them. There is nothing more seductive than the hope that time will fix what hurts. But there is also nothing more deceptive. Time does not heal. It dulls. It distracts. It covers.

The Gita does not promise that the pain will end. It promises that you are more than the one who is hurting.

Healing, then, is not something that happens to you. It is a shift in what you know yourself to be. It is not measured by the softness of memory, but by the stillness of clarity. What you truly are was never broken — and what was broken was never truly you.

So don’t wait for time to make you better. Let truth set you free.