As Amrit points out, physics models time inefficiently.

As mobile organisms, we experience reality as sequential flashes of perception, in order to navigate and then tell stories to one another and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge, so this narrative dimension is foundational to our understanding of reality, but the simple fact is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc.

So, as you say, it is all just fluctuations, between the absolute, where everything sums out, and the infinite, where everything fades out.

Here is an essay I wrote, going into it further;

https://medium.com/@johnbrodixmerrymanjr/the-confessions-of-a-cosmic-heretic-5cd4c044b8ea