Time is a Partner, Not a Thief.

Is there a more appropriate moment to reflect on the nature of time than the day after daylight savings ends—when time itself feels arbitrary, almost contrived? When we walk through our homes resetting the clocks on stoves and dashboards, knowing full well it will take weeks before they all tell the same story again?

My first encounter with the strangeness of time came in high school, reading The Confessions of St. Augustine. It was there that I met one of philosophy’s most enduring questions: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.” Augustine’s paradox is as true today as it was in the 4th century—time seems obvious until we try to understand it.

At seventeen, I underlined those lines and moved on. I grasped the poetry but not the weight of what he meant. Years later, holding my daughter Evelyn, I began to understand. As she grew—first teeth, first words, first steps—I celebrated each milestone with pride and, if I’m honest, a pang of loss. Around me, other parents posted their laments: “Time is a thief.” “Slow down, time.” “Bring back my baby.” These are tender, human expressions, and yet—they reveal a misunderstanding I’ve come to reject.

Time is a partner, not a thief.

To call time a thief is to miss its purpose. Time does not steal; it reveals. It uncovers, matures, clarifies, and heals. It is the steady current that moves us from what we were toward what we are becoming. The question is not how to slow it down, but how to move with it.

Philosopher Henri Bergson argued that our perception of time—what he called durée réelle, or “real duration”—is not a sequence of identical units but a living, qualitative flow (Bergson, Time and Free Will, 1889). In other words, time is not the clock on the stove that needs resetting; it is the movement of consciousness itself. When we call time a thief, we deny its creative role in shaping who we become. We also vilify something we are forced to live with—and that is a terrible way to live.

In my professional life in higher education, I’ve often joked that “the funny thing about homecoming—or commencement, or any other ritual—is that it happens every year.” But this repetition is not monotony; it’s mercy. Each cycle offers the chance to refine, to test, to evolve. Time gives us rhythm—the framework within which progress becomes possible.

We cannot make more time, but we can become better stewards of the time we have. How we spend it—who we spend it with, what we give it to—reveals our deepest values. If we truly care about the work before us, the people beside us, and the lives we are building, then we must learn to treat time not as something to resist, but as something to respect.

This week, as we adjust our clocks and our rhythms, pay attention to how you interact with time. Where do you fight it? Where do you flow with it? What would change if, instead of mourning its passage, you partnered with it?

Because time will move either way—the invitation is to move with it.

Reference:
Bergson, H. (1889). Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Paris: Félix Alcan.