The Fig Tree

“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 Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat 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 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.” -Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar

Upon reading this quote, I now realise I might be the death of me. I was so indecisive about my courses always picking and re-picking. How fickle I seemed- PPE/Law/Econs, they were all my figs and I was desperate to choose one and yet I couldn't. The motivations behind each might not be so pure- Law was job security, Econs was money, only PPE was the wild free radical one.

To be like Sylvia Plath was probably not the dream but yet I appreciate her prose.