“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
– The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Everybody has likely come across some variation of the Fig Tree analogy whether or not they’ve read the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Being the indecisive person I’ve always been, these declarations of uncertainty in literature have always stood out to me. For example, take Robert Frost’s infamous “The Road not Taken,” which begins with “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both.” How can you willfully make one choice, knowing you’re forfeiting every other possibility open to you?
Indecision has plagued me throughout most of my childhood, and maybe that’s why I’ve dipped my toes into so many different ponds. Bumping around from job to job, city to city, living in a flurry of transitions, constantly uprooted and untethered like a speck of lone dust floating in the sun. It never felt right settling down in one place, one career track, one fixed state of mind when the world is so vast, teeming with experiences yet to be explored.
This chronic indecisiveness has gone from an irritating tingle to an open sore as I hurtle toward my 25th birthday. Once again, I’m stuck at a crossroads – I’ve just finished my master’s. Do I get a job (considering I’m lucky enough to win the job market lottery in this current economic climate)? And which position, which company do I want to work with– what do I really want to do? Do I get another degree? Do I live in New York City? Do I move back home? Do I travel while I’m still young? Or do I give up my youth for the idea of the stability that comes with a consistent salary? That last one feels like an attractive option. After all, I always envisioned a twenty-five year old woman as someone who wears blazers and pencil skirts, clicking her heels down the streets of New York to her corporate 9-5. She’s tall, confident, wealthy, and she knows what she wants.
My friend told me once, after my initial move to New Jersey, that she admired how I was capable of throwing myself into the deep end and allowing myself to drown. It was what I needed to hear in the lonely corner of the new apartment that I hated, knowing that even while I was terrified, other people might view my choices as brave. And I’ve always liked the idea of starting fresh in a new city every couple of years, even if just to outrun my own boredom and whittle away the time, but lately something’s changed. A desire to put down some roots and let them expand. To build community, even if I don’t know where I’ll be a month or two from now. There is so much fear and uncertainty in the limbo, but a flicker of hope too.
In Matt Haig’s “A Midnight Library,” (spoiler alert) a woman on the brink of death is faced with the opportunity to see all of the lives she never got to live. She gets to experience multiple alternate realities, like if she had stayed with her ex-lover, or traveled to Antarctica, or become a world famous athlete, or had a family and children. Eventually, she chooses to go back to her regular life with a newfound appreciation not just for what she has, but for all of the things that she could have had. It made me think about the concept of destiny, and how nothing is pre-ordained. All the possibilities of this world are within our reach, if only we can learn how to channel them. Every decision is just another step toward the life we’re meant to live, mistakes and all. And all of the experiences we gather are just a culmination of our Life. Perhaps that is common sense, or perhaps it’s all nonsensical.
Anyway, I’m looking up at the figs above me, wondering if the variations in ripeness are just an illusion. Wondering if maybe picking one fig doesn’t mean casting aside all the others. Wondering if maybe there’s nothing wrong with aiming for the one I can reach and learning to savor the bite. All that to say, perhaps it’s possible to reach for one branch without fearing that the rest of the tree will crumble into the soil.
