You meet someone. They feel right in a way that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about love. But life—unforgiving, unsentimental life—steps in. Maybe they’re leaving, or healing, or lost in a dream that doesn’t have space for you. And so, the story is given a name: right person, wrong time.

It’s a phrase we use to make sense of love that slips through our fingers. A way to comfort ourselves with the idea that the universe messed up, not us. But what if the Bhagavad Gita, one of the deepest philosophical texts ever written, tells us we’re looking at it all wrong?

1. What Is Meant for You, Stays

True connections endure, timing doesn’t change destiny.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks about dharma—one’s true path, the order of things. He tells Arjuna: "No one can destroy that which is truly real." In other words, what is yours—truly yours—will never be lost to timing.
We like to think that if circumstances had been different, the love we lost would have lasted. But here’s the truth: the right person doesn’t become the wrong person just because of timing. The right connection endures, adapts, finds a way. And if it didn’t? Then maybe it wasn’t the timing. Maybe it wasn’t meant to last at all.

2. We Cling to Love, Even When It’s Meant to End

Attachment causes suffering; some love is temporary.

The Gita speaks extensively about attachment—how we hold onto things, thinking they belong to us. Krishna warns against this: "Attachment leads to desire, desire leads to suffering." And isn’t that what we do with love? We meet someone, feel something profound, and refuse to let go—even when life pulls us apart. We convince ourselves that a love cut short is a mistake, that timing betrayed us. But what if that love was never meant to last? What if its purpose was to change us, not stay with us?
The Gita teaches that clinging to something that is meant to pass only leads to suffering. Maybe that person wasn’t stolen by time. Maybe they arrived just long enough to show you something you needed to see.

3. Karma Is Not a Coincidence

Every meeting has purpose, shaped by past actions.

Krishna tells Arjuna that every moment is shaped by karma—the unseen thread of past actions, choices, and consequences. When we face heartbreak, we often ask, Why me? Why now? But the Gita tells us that nothing is random.
That person you met? That love that felt just out of reach? It wasn’t a mistake. It was exactly the lesson you needed at exactly the moment you needed it. Maybe to prepare you for something greater. Maybe to help you let go of the idea that love is something you can control.

4. The Illusion of ‘Almost’

The right person arrives at the right time.

We love the idea of the ‘one that got away.’ It’s poetic. It’s tragic. It lets us believe that love is bigger than us, that it can exist outside of reality. But Krishna doesn’t deal in ‘almosts.’ He speaks only of truth.
The right person doesn’t arrive at the wrong time. They arrive at the time they were always meant to. And they either stay, or they don’t. If they don’t, then they weren’t yours. Not truly.

So, What Now?If you’re holding onto someone who is already gone, ask yourself: Am I grieving a love that existed? Or am I grieving a love I imagined could have been? Because if Krishna teaches us anything, it’s this: the past is not a mistake. The people who leave are not a loss. The love that fades was never wrong. It was simply complete.