Finding a ring
Finding a ring has been the stuff of legend since Polycrates of Samos found his in a fish. Most rings are lost to cold water, soap and sunscreen rather than carelessness, a gentle point about the losses that are nobody's fault.
What it may mean
Somebody is missing that ring, and right now they probably blame themselves. Yet rings slide off for reasons that have little to do with care: fingers shrink in cold water and winter air, sunscreen and soap make skin slick, a glove pulled off in a hurry takes the ring with it. The loss happened to them more than they caused it. Holding a ring you found, you might think about the losses in your own life that you still count as failures: the thing you dropped when conditions changed, the friendship that slipped away in a cold season. Not every loss is a lapse in love or attention. Some just happen when the weather turns. Old stories, from ancient Greece to an English kitchen, tell of rings that came back against all odds.
Depending on how you saw it
A ring in the sand at the beach
Beaches are among the best places to find rings, because cold water and sunscreen loosen them and sand hides them. People with metal detectors find dozens each summer and many try to return them. What is lost near you, waiting for someone with the patience to look?
A ring with an engraving inside
Initials and a date inside a band are a piece of someone's story in your hand. A jeweler, a local lost-and-found group or a post online can sometimes carry it home. Whose story have you been holding without knowing it, a photo, a letter, an object from a relative?
A ring in the parking lot
Rings often fly off when gloves are tugged off or hands dig for keys in the cold. It took a second to lose and may take months to find again. What small, quick moment in your week deserves more care than you give it?
An old ring in a drawer or a thrift shop
Rings outlast their owners easily, since gold and silver do not rust. A ring from a thrift shop has had at least one life before yours. Is there something you inherited, an object or a habit, whose earlier life you would like to know more about?
Why it happens in nature
Fingers shrink in cold weather and cold water, and soap, lotion and sunscreen make skin slippery, which is why rings so often slip off at beaches, pools and in winter. Gold and silver do not rust, so a lost ring can turn up in good shape years later. Engravings, jewelers' marks and local lost-and-found groups sometimes lead a ring back to its owner.
What folk beliefs say
Ancient Greece (Samos)
An old Greek story tells that Polycrates, king of Samos, threw a costly emerald ring into the sea to test his good fortune, and that it came back the next day inside a fish served at his table.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 731. View the page
England (Dorset)
A story from East Lulworth, in Dorset, recorded in 1903, tells of a woman who lost her ring and found it two years later inside a potato she was peeling, dug from a neighboring field.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 486. View the page
To reflect on
Which loss are you still counting as a failure that may simply have been bad weather?