Time and Eternity: A Reflection

Credit By: BASIT MUGHAL

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• 17 Apr 2026

What truly lasts when everything around us seems destined to pass?

Philosophers and theologians have long distinguished between chronological time, what the Greeks called ‘chronos’, and a deeper, qualitative sense of time, ‘kairos’, the time of meaning, turning points, and inner transformations. In ordinary speech, we sense this difference. Some days feel endless, though only a few hours pass, and moments that change our lives in seconds yet echo in our memory for years. This tension between measurable time and lived time becomes especially intense in places where history is heavy.

Eternity is often imagined as the opposite of time, a kind of frozen, endless duration. Yet many philosophical and spiritual traditions suggest something subtler. Eternity is not simply time stretched to infinity. Rather, it is a different mode of existence—one in which value, truth or presence is not eroded by the passing of days. A just act, a word of courage, a sincere prayer, or a poem whispered in the dark hours of uncertainty: these seem to belong to a register of meaning that resists decay. They endure not in stone, but in consciousness, memory, and sometimes in the moral awakening they inspire.

In this sense, eternity is not far away; it is hidden inside certain experiences of time. When a parent holds a newborn child, or an artisan loses himself in the delicate work of weaving, or a student finally grasps a difficult idea after months of struggle, time seems to thicken and glow. We no longer count minutes; we inhabit a fullness. Kashmir’s own cultural life, its poetry, its Sufi and Rishi traditions, its lingering songs, has long pointed to such moments where the mundane slips aside and another dimension of reality briefly breaks through.

Yet, to speak of eternity in an age of speed is almost countercultural. The modern world worships the instant: instant messages, instant profits, instant gratification. We are urged to move faster, consume more, and fear missing out. Under such pressure, time is flattened into a race, and human beings are reduced to units of productivity. In this logic, anything that cannot be measured or monetised, such as a long silence, a careful conversation, contemplation, prayer, or the slow mastery of a craft, appears wasteful.

Kashmir offers a quiet resistance to this attitude, though not always consciously. Our cycles of season, from the almond blossoms of spring to the stark white of winter, invite a humble recognition: growth cannot be hurried, and healing does not obey deadlines. The Chinar does not leaf or shed on demand. Snow takes its own time to melt. An entire civilisation of shawl-makers, papier-mâché artists and wood carvers has been built on an ethics of slowness on the belief that some things are worth doing even if they cannot be rushed or fully repaid.

From an academic perspective, one could say that such practices open a window from time into eternity. They cultivate forms of attention that linger, deepen and remember. They train us to value the quality of time over the quantity of output. A finely woven shawl bears within it hundreds of hours, but also patience, concentration, and a lineage of knowledge handed down over generations. It is not merely an object; it is a repository of lived time transformed into enduring meaning.

There is also a moral and political dimension to how we understand time and eternity. If we believe that only the immediate counts, we become vulnerable to short-term temptations: easy slogans, quick gains, and policies that trade away long-term justice for momentary advantage. If, instead, we see ourselves as answerable to something larger and more lasting—to truth, to future generations, and for many of us to Almighty God—then our choices acquire a different gravity. Eternity, in this light, is not an escape from responsibility but its deepest ground.

Living with an awareness of eternity does not mean withdrawing from the world or ignoring urgent problems. It means recognising that every decision, however small, participates in a longer story. To spend an afternoon teaching a child to read, to document a dying craft, to plant a tree one may never sit under—all these acts defy the tyranny of the instant. They assert that what is right is not always what is immediately rewarded, and that the measure of a life cannot be taken only by how much it has accumulated, but by what it has quietly nurtured.

Perhaps this is the challenge and the opportunity for Kashmir today: to hold together a realistic sense of time with its deadlines, constraints and losses—with a more hopeful sense of eternity, where justice, beauty and compassion are never finally defeated. Our valley has endured centuries of change, and yet it’s essential aspirations to live with dignity, to worship freely, to preserve its language and arts, to raise children in safety, remain remarkably constant. These enduring desires are hints of the eternal within the temporal.

In the end, time will take everything visible from us: our bodies, possessions, even the buildings and institutions we once thought permanent. What it cannot so easily erase is the meaning we create, the relationships we honour, the truth we speak and the kindness we show when no one is watching. To attend to these is to live, even now, at the edge of eternity.

(The Author is studying English Literature and is a freelancer)