Time passes irrevocably.

In cartoons, in movies, time passes differently. There are flashbacks and flashfowards.

I always wanted to get out of L.A., but time passes, and you find excuses to stay.

Time sometimes passes quite quickly.

As time passes we all get better at blazing a trail through the thicket of advice

We say that time passes, time goes by, and time flows. Those are metaphors. We also think of time as a medium in which we exist.