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Research published this week seems to show that The brains of teenagers who lived through the Covid pandemic show signs of premature ageing. Scientists, publishing in the journal of Biological Psychiatry, compared the brains of those who went through adolescence during the pandemic with those who went through adolescence prior. They concluded that as well as causing poorer mental health, the pandemic appeared to have accelerated brain aging, with a brain age difference of about three years, much higher than they expected. Whilst an ageing brain doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with depression, in the last couple of years adolescents in particular have experienced the rapid changes that are typical at that age but whilst the world seemingly stood still and their normal routines were upended. Many of us felt that dislocation with our normal experience of the passage of time, but it was particularly hard for young people and has often been a catalyst for poor mental health. Lord Krishna invites us to look at time from another perspective. And today marks the 5159th anniversary of Krishna speaking his words of spiritual wisdom known as the Bhagavad Gita. In this conversation He explains that God or Krishna himself is time, describing time as a force which has differing effects on the human self and the spiritual self. Time, he says, brings cycles of loss and gain and creation and destruction in human life. In the spiritual dimension it brings variety and experience that is innately joyful, where there are no beginnings or endings. So whilst human ageing is inevitable, Krishna teaches that the spiritual self is ever youthful and resistant to the effects that time has on matter. Time rules and regiments our lives and if we let it, it can be a barrier to a healthy relationship with our own bodies and the world around us. A friend recently asked me, as a psychiatrist, what advice do I repeatedly find myself giving to my patients. Every person is different, but it often includes hope and reassurance about what changes time could bring in their life. It’s expected that we will try do what we can to make time stand still, to prevent, delay or even speed up its effects given the suffering it often brings. But, our healthiest relationship with time will be when we are in our most natural and spiritual state. The most spiritual time is now, this moment right now because it is the only one existing. The past has passed and the future doesn’t yet exist. Now, is the only real moment we can influence. I find as I connect with God as a force of time in the present, not running away or catching up, it helps me draw on a strength that has a harmonious relationship with time and rather than seeking to be uplifted by the events around me, to connect with a joy within me.