(THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM ‘THE BOOK OF MOODS’)
In 1963, Elizabeth Taylor had just ended her fourth marriage and was starring in Cleopatra with the currently married Richard Burton. Within a year, the two were married at the Ritz in Montreal and their fame from Cleopatra, coupled with the drama of their private lives, made them the most famous couple in the world.
Like Kim and Kanye, they lived through extravagance. During the 1960s, they earned a combined $88 million and spent more than $65 million. They bought a fleet of Rolls-Royces, floors of luxury hotels, a private jet, a helicopter, and a multimillion-dollar yacht. And in 1969, every woman in America swooned a little when Richard Burton bought his wife the sixty-nine-carat Taylor-Burton Diamond for $1.1 million (adjusted for inflation, that’s today’s equivalent of $7 million).
Not only was it the world’s most expensive diamond, it was the world’s most sought-after diamond. When it was initially sold at auction, Burton lost in a bidding war with Cartier (Aristotle Onassis also lost). Accepting that he would have to go over his initial ground of $1 million, he made a deal with Cartier to buy it off them for $50,000 more than they’d spent on it.
Cartier, being a business above all else, agreed. They’d make $50,000 (the equivalent of $342,000 in today’s dollars) profit in one day and stipulated, in a savvy marketing move, that the ring would first have to be displayed at Cartier boutiques in New York and Chicago before being handed off to its new owner. During that brief stint in Cartier’s window, an estimated six thousand people stood in line to get a glimpse not just of the diamond, but of a symbol of the great passion they’d never have.
What does a million-dollar diamond look like? To many women, it looked like love. It looked like everything they dreamed about—that Hollywood love story. But no one in line, staring into the sparkling display, actually knew the true story of why Burton bought Taylor the most expensive diamond in the world.
Just a few weeks beforehand, the couple had been on vacation in Italy, sitting in a café, when Burton got into one of his angry drunken moods. When Elizabeth tried to cheer him up, asking him to hold her hand, he slapped it away , saying he wished she didn’t have such large, ugly masculine hands.
“Well, I guess you’ll have to buy me a diamond so big it makes my large hands look small,” she replied.
Burton would later write in his diaries, “That insult last night is going to cost me.”
And the six thousand people lining up to see Elizabeth Taylor’s million-dollar ring would never know that it wasn’t a sign of devotion and love, but a gift of penance. That this ring was only the sign of their demise, a sparkling reflection of the drugs and the booze that would lead Elizabeth to eventually sell the diamond for $3 million (today’s equivalent of $9 million) to finance her sixth husband’s political campaign.
Why do I tell you this anecdote about Elizabeth Taylor? Because I want you to think of it next time you find yourself interpreting someone’s actions. I want you to think of it when you think you know exactly why something happened and why someone did something. I want you to use it to remind yourself that most situations we perceive one way turn out to have a completely different story.
We make up stories all the time. Our friends didn’t text us back because they don’t like us. Our mom said that thing about our bathing suit because she thinks we’re slutty. Our sister forgot our new boyfriend’s name because she doesn’t like him.
But take a beat and look at the other side. Maybe your friend didn’t text back because she was overwhelmed. Maybe your mom said something about your bathing suit because she feels uncomfortable in her own. Maybe your sister forgot the name of your new boyfriend because she’s been going through her own relationship issues and she’s too distracted to remember.
Most of our moods stem from our own thoughts, which stem from our misconceptions and misinterpretations about what someone said or did. Perception is everything. How you perceive a situation, a dialogue, a moment, is the difference between getting into a mood and avoiding one.
To read more pre-order The Book of Moods
