Mine is colorless. My amazing albatross doesn’t need any color because what it does is absorb all the color and light around it and reflect it back out to the world. How cool is that??!!
You see, my albatross is a large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant that has been hanging around my neck for most of my life. It is a super-duper magical prism because not only is it multi-faceted, it is also multi-functional.
First of all, it is quite the fashion forward statement: a lovely piece of jewelry. It satisfies my need for beauty. Honest to God, I wish I could take a picture of it for you and really show it off. It sparkles like the Hope Diamond as I let it hang betwixt and between my breastal display cases.
Its visibility feels like a matter of life and death.
Secondly, not only have I, a complete novice at crafting jewelry, designed it (by myself!), but I have continued to enhance it since that first teeny tiny tear refused to be shed and, therefore, lodged itself in my little girl chest just to the right of my heart. Every unshed tear after that has eagerly attached itself to the teeny magnificent facet of my first foray into withholding my feelings, resulting in what has become my uniquely crafted, large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant. I don’t think I have ever taken it off: not for a shower, not for dinner with family and/or friends, and certainly never during marriage (especially while lovemaking).
Wearing it feels like a matter of life and death.
So, here’s the problem.
I have recently begun to have neck and shoulder pain, a result, as told to me by my doctor, of the weight of my large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant around my neck. After all the years of wearing it and growing it, it is beginning to take its toll on my body.
You know me by now, and I confess to being just the teeniest bit out there, so I decided to sit down with my pendant and have a little talk. Maybe we could strike a deal with some of those pendant teardrops. Would they be up for reshaping themselves into a matching set of chandelier earrings and possibly a chunky bracelet? In that way, I can continue to wear a more manageable, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant (that I need so much), and have a set of earrings and a bracelet to match!
I attempted a generative and open discussion. It didn’t work.
As it turns out this pendant has its own agenda. This is what it told me. My large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant has no intention of being “busted up” (its words not mine) into earrings and a bracelet. It needs its size to protect me. Yes, it is my own very personal talisman.
Not only that, but this protection is very specific. I already mentioned that my large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant absorbs all the color and light that comes towards me and reflects it back. Well, I stand corrected. This pendant told me that what it does is “refract” it back.
Big difference.
Reflect: to mirror, imitate, replicate, echo
Refract: to alter the appearance of something by viewing or showing it through a different medium.
And not only does this pendant have its own agenda; it informed me of its name. It wants me to call it Disappointment (and yes, I was told to capitalize). My large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant is actually the accumulated unshed tears of my past disappointments.
And now on top of everything else, Disappointment is disappointed in me for even bringing up the whole matching earrings and bracelet thing.
Okay, now I know what the Ancient Mariner felt like.
So many things clicked into place when he/she/it told me about him/her/itself. I don’t wear my disappointments on my sleeve; I wear my Disappointments right in front for all to witness and for all incoming interactions to be refracted through.
It’s not my large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal pendant. It’s my large, teardrop shaped, multi-faceted crystal lens through which I have been viewing the world.
WOW…no wonder all I see is Disappointment in myself and everyone else.
So I made a visit to my old buddy Samuel Taylor Coleridge to see how the Ancient Mariner handled the release of his Albatross. The Ancient Mariner adrift on the sea, alone, surrounded by 200 dead mates, as close to death as one can get, suddenly saw the beauty of the water snakes as they swam across the sea.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
This not-so-Ancient redheaded Mariner plans on making every attempt to be open to and grateful for life embraced and reflected through my very own unprotected Self. To being willing to let go of experiencing life through the once beautiful but now burdensome lens of my past disappointments. Like my fellow sailing buddy, the Mariner…
It feels like a matter of life and death.
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