Time is a beautiful thing. It’s like when you meet an old lover on the street six years later and they don’t look so ugly anymore.

The remark treats time as an aesthetic and emotional solvent: distance softens sharp judgments, resentments, and the intensity of past hurt. By comparing time to unexpectedly finding an “old lover” less “ugly” years later, McLachlan suggests that what once felt repellent or unbearable can become tolerable—even tender—once the immediate drama has faded. The line also hints at the unreliability of perception: “ugliness” may have been as much about anger, disappointment, or wounded pride as about the person themselves. In that sense, time doesn’t merely heal; it reframes, allowing memory and feeling to settle into a more generous perspective.