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When I read the Fig Tree analogy of Sylvia Plath, I was once again reminded of the absolute overwhelming truth of the fact that human consciousness, human will, human thought, is ultimately all the same.

And that even though we’re all unique and unparalleled in our mental states, our problems, our emotions, our choices and our experiences are ultimately overlapping.

They resemble each other despite being different and original in that we share something essential—saying that we share the same soul would be too metaphorical, too poetic and unrealistic, but there is something that makes us empathize and relate and feel just by listening to stories, by watching people feel, through music and narration and newspapers. 

For ages, people have found acceptance in other people’s acceptance. They have found relief in solidarity. They have read about things that others have faced and that they themselves are facing, and they have found it easier to bear, easier to accept. 

So when I read about the Fig Tree, it was as if something I’d been feeling forever had been put into words, actualised and solidified, made real, made acceptable. 

And all that even before I’d been born. 

I saw my life branching out like the green fig tree in the story. From the top 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, a 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

Sometimes I think I can see the figs dropping down on the ground, never to be picked up again. They decay and are mostly forgotten, but some of them remain in memories—regrets or fuel for laughter or something else entirely, I don’t know. 

When I was in school I was very convinced that I would become a field botanist—and while I realise now that I would’ve been miserable and tired and probably too busy than I ever want to be, it was a pretty fantastic what if. Plants were fascinating and forest sounded like heaven.

Quiet, ethereal, alive in the way few things in a city are. I am still convinced that in some alternate reality, in another universe, I tread through the trees, finding fungi and cataloguing strange leaf shapes or unusual salt content of soils. And sometimes, thinking about it makes me wonder—what other forgotten figs loiter around in the soft grass of my metaphorical garden. 

The analogy is so strikingly relatable that you can’t not just feel as if you’ve been living all your life trying not to count the figs and failing miserable, and that you’ve just now realised it.

I feel like I’ve been counting figs, cataloguing them, filing them away for future consideration, pushing them into cryo-freeze in a desperate attempt to keep them viable. At every turn  and at every crossroad. And I think I’ve been mourning the figs that go away for good, as we all do, unconsciously and unknowingly. 

There are endless possibilities and endless probabilities and maybe we can choose just one, maybe that’s our limit. 

Choices and chances

Sometimes you what it all. Sometimes, you don’t know what you want. Sometimes, you keep doubting yourself, asking yourself if this is really what I want. Sometimes you’re confused. And I get that. 

Sometimes it feels very overwhelming—having the reigns of your destiny in your own hands, having the ability to make and mould your future. It is liberating and overwhelming and slightly scary. To know that your choices are all that matter. 

And I do believe in a semblance of free will. I believe that we have choices at every point of our life and that the path we choose creates our future. There are an infinity of crossroads, like multiple choice questions littering our entire life. This is no True False situation, but every choice leads the way it further future choices. Every choice has consequences. 

And if there are so many choices, can we somehow identify and choose the best one?  Can we know which one is the best? Is there even a best life? Maybe there isn’t. 

Multiverse and Maybe

Maybe there is no best life. Maybe there are just lives, and in some of them, you are sad. But in others, you are also happy. Maybe in a select few you are even unbearably happy. Whenever I think about the concept of a multiverse— a cluster of millions of parallel universes, each different, each new, I am momentarily overwhelmed. It is overwhelming—to think about another me in another life.

I cannot even begin to think about a better or worse life. Just the thought of another, a different one seems strange and uncomfortable, like an itch that doesn’t go away. Maybe in another life, I’m a sculptor. Maybe I’m bad at studies. Maybe I’m uncharacteristically blunt. Maybe I’m rude. Maybe I paint all day long. Maybe I don’t even draw. Maybe I play violin. Maybe I don’t like to read books—no that’s actually not possible.

The point is, it’s a bit overwhelming. Because in this world just anything is not possible. Everything is possible. Everything is possible and everything is reality.

Somewhere if not here. 

It’s also overwhelming that for whatever life I have in this world, there is a life better and a life worse to compare. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To not compare. To just believe that this life is what we have and this is our own and this is what we have to make the most of. 

So no, I don’t think there is an objectively best life. A life superior than all the others. And I don’t think we can choose such a life, not even if we got all the possibilities and combinations spread out before us on an infinitely large table. It’s impossible to know which combination of environment and action and which life path in which circumstance we will find the best. 

Because I might be a field botanist in another life, but in that life maybe I’m also not as much into reading and watching and writing as I am in this one. Maybe I wouldn’t like it very much in this one. 

I think there are only lives, unique and as much our own as nothing else is. And this one life that we’ve got may be a bit rough around the edges, for some it is nothing but jagged ends and sharp cracks, but this life is the one you have control over. This is the one you can embrace and hope and work to make better. 

There are figs lying around in the grass, rotting away and disintegrating into nothing but what ifs and may bes. But there is a fig stuffed in the hollow of your palm, and maybe you don’t know that you’re holding it, maybe it’s there on its own because you couldn’t chose, maybe you can still exchange it for one lying around, alive and ready to be picked up.

Maybe you have the choice, if only you could be brave enough to make it. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you already did and you’re regretting it. 

I don’t know. I’ve never known much of anything that actually matters, but for weird, vague tidbits of poetic nothings that fill me with hope, hope, hope. I am nothing but hope. And maybe that’s all we need. Hope that it will all go down as it is meant to. And that it will be fine. Because how else can we survive if by not hoping and believing. 

What else is there to live for but hope and the fact there are an infinity of figs lying around on your metaphorical garden, ready to be picked and devoured, and that you have all the time in world to pick one, because the ones on the ground might be rotting away, but the tree is alive and the tree grows new ones all the time.

If the figs are your lives, then you are not sitting around helplessly watching. You are the tree. The possibilities are endless as long as you stand and breathe and live.

Here’s a link to Amazon where you can get The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath if you liked the fig tree analogy, in all its fatalistic, tragic glory. Buy now!

If you liked this post, you can also check Why We Do What We Do: Decisions And Determinism.