Our Greatest Benefactor
We all think of time as our enemy...how foolish! For in reality, time is not our enemy but our friend. It is an anodyne for our suffering. It is a philosopher’s staff on which to lean. It is the magic that lifts the crushing burden from our shoulders and makes smooth the rough places in life.
To women, time is kinder than they think. It offers itself to them as an ally instead of an adversary if they will meet it in the right spirit, and if it takes from them the fleeting beauty of youth, it will give them instead a charm that will never fade.
For no women are so fascinating as those whom age and experience have ripened and perfected and given sophistication and taught every art of pleasing. And age gives beauty to many women who never had it in their youth...Many an old woman’s face is luminous with the goodness of her soul that shines through like light through an alabaster vase.
Time is the greatest solver of all our problems, if only we had intelligence enough to trust it. We lie awake at night and worry over our difficulties, wondering, if this or that contingency happened, what should be the best way to act. How much anxiety we might spare ourselves, if we would lay our problems on the knees of time. For when the hour comes, we find that time has solved it all and our course is perfectly obvious.
Time is the strengthener. Sometimes we are confronted with conditions that turn our souls sick. Sometimes the tasks appointed seem more onerous than we can perform. At first our courage ebbs...Then time begins to blur the harsh outlines of our background, to strengthen our backs to bear the burdens, and to breathe into us new hope and spirit.
Time brings with it the blessing of forgetfulness. It turns the memory of hardships into piquant reminiscences. It makes our mistakes something to laugh over, and makes our fellow creatures condone our transgressions because they were committed so long ago.
And time is the great peacemaker. Time robs old feuds of their enmity and old hatreds of their bitterness and makes us forgive those who have wronged us. Time teaches us how senseless it is to sour our own lives with a grudge.
Best of all, time is the great consoler. When we lose those we love, we feel that the sun has set for us. We find no cheer in anything, no interest. No words, sympathy, philosophy lighten our sorrow. Nothing can help but time.
For it has been mercifully ordained that the wound must heal and the ache grows less poignant. Time brings us fresh interests, other joys, duties to other people, work that absorbs us, and so by degrees turns the grief into a sorrow that can be borne. Blessed be time that heals us.