The myth of healing ointment

 My cousin sister's son was once critically ill. Just 25, his liver ravaged by alcoholism, lying on the ventilator support for almost two months. His multiple organs collapsing, there were slim chances of survival. And we would look up to the doctor as the ultimate savior, the one who would claw him back from the jaws of death. He understood our pain. 'See, medicines are just external aids. It's for his own body to heal from within,' he said with sympathy. These are very substantial words. They apply to all the problems and drama that we face in life. Since our sense perception is biologically outward bound, we naturally seek the solutions outside. We feel that dis-ease, discontent, stress, pain, incompleteness, the nagging feeling of something lacking and naturally we seek the remedies outside just like we apply ointment on a wound. But healing comes from within. Ointment and medicine is just one of the favorable factors. They aren't the final solution. It's so natural to seek the help and aid of relationships in healing the pain and the fatigue born of the exhaustive quest within. Now a relationship is just a temporary balm on the bruise. It has a placebo effect like most of the pills we take. The problem arises when we put undue expectations from an external ointment to heal us to the core. It's our own bruise. The healing has to come from within. Family, relationships, husband, wife, siblings, children, friends and acquaintance are the temporary soothing balm on the painful boil. They are there for external help. They help you in creating suitable circumstances for your internal healing, growth and evolution. But they aren't the cause of this healing. They are nice support staff at the most. And we should never forget they themselves are the carriers of their own bruises. We are the ointment for them. They aren't complete. They are as wonded as we. They need as much external support in healing as we. And they look upto us as their ointment. They aren't the all powerful panacea, they are merely sailing in the same boat. The moment we realize this, we can forgive the little sparks born of two ointments innocently seeking each other to heal from within. This understanding and the consequent forgiveness can cement the bond within families, friends and relationships. What else is the group of family, friends, acquaintances if not a band of sailors eyeing a common shore to land and then proceed on their own journey on the land? And two lovers are simply paddling their canoe across the choppy waters, to cross a phase, land somewhere at the point of common interest and move on their journey--in this lifetime itself if the relationship breaks, or after death if it survives the vicissitudes of life. But this relative shortness or longevity doesn't undo the primary fact that this coming together was just a temporary alignment of destinies looking for their complete healing, the coming home. So we should never judge our relationships in terms of their relative longevity. Numbers are just quantitative denominations. They never cover the qualitative essence. And the qualitative essence here is that all this is transitive pairing of destinies, irrespective of the fact that a relationship lasts for a few months or lifelong. Both are almost same on the infinite spread of the eternity.