Time as a river. Weird that it stuck. You say “flows,” like it carries everything that was off beyond some horizon. Even the language leaves no choice. “Gone to the past,” “can’t get it back.” Remembering feels like chasing a boat on fast water.

But in Dark, all that breaks down. There’s no running water there. Time doesn’t roll or leave. It just is. A lake, not a river.

You stand at the edge and look down: under the surface, everything is kept all at once. Decades, childhood, yesterday’s fear or a random joy. Not gone. Just somewhere on another layer deep down.

Turns out physics thinks the same way. The past didn’t go anywhere, it exists right now, but you can’t see it from your spot on the shore.

That day at the summer house is still there. That fight in the stairwell. That funny moment in the kitchen. Only it’s a different slice of the lake — out of your view.

If only you could jump… Not forward or back along the flow, but dive straight down — maybe you’d meet your old self face to face?

It gets unsettling.

If everything exists at once — does that mean none of your actions disappear? All your mistakes still hanging somewhere under the water? Joys too?

Then you don’t really lose anything — you just move along the surface and change your angle of view.

That feeling quickly becomes a normal background. You live like moments leave forever. But it turns out — they’re right there nearby.

That’s kind of comforting.

But if nothing’s gone — can you change anything? Or are you like a fish between layers of water: moving back and forth, but the lake itself stays the same?

In Dark, the sadness is sharp because the past stays literally close — but out of reach.

You know that other shore is almost certain: it’s there, you see the reflection through the water… But you can’t get there by normal means.

Maybe that’s why the sadness for what’s gone feels like wanting to go home to your old self? Because the home really stands right there, but the door can’t be found.

So why does it still feel like time is leaving?