On the fig tree analogy

 I am sure you have heard about the fig tree analogy. It has made it rounds about the internet, and I am just now coming across it, sort of. I have felt the feelings of this grappling thought yet hadn't heard of the term used to describe this phenomenon. 

The "Fig tree analogy" derives from Silvia Plath'a The Bell Jar, where she sits beneath a fig tree and although starving, can't seem to make up her mind as to which of the figs she want to eat. This is applied to the urgency and need with which many of us are to pick the life that we are going to lead... to be an artist, to be an architect, to be a working mom, a stay at home mom... etc. It paints the picture that we all grapple with at some point (or many points) in life where we stand at a cross roads and must make a decision as to where to go from there. 

              " 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, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attlia and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. 

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 everyone 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" 

-Sylvia Plath

The analogy is particularly frightening because we are taught to believe that we must pick a fig, and that were are within a time constraint to do so. It seems that we are rushed through life from the moment we step foot in this world, and the stop of choosing in which direction to go makes no exception. 

It is one thing to have this struggle as an adult, with the entirety of your brain developed. But what can we say about the pressure that we put on younger people, teenagers. That doomed year of the closing of senior year and beginning the year where you must decide "what you're going to do".. 

 But who says that we can't fill the tiers of our skirts with multiple figs? Why must we just choose one? 

So my dear reader, 

grab as many figs as you can, while you can. At least that is what I'll aim to do..