Figs

Notes from the field on choice

Do young women still read Sylvia Plath? I know many of us of a certain age sure did and The Bell Jar is one of those books that meant something. In our teenage melancholy, we saw ourselves reflected in her life and situation - awkward, bumbling, intelligent and on a mission.

The Bell Jar will always have a place in my heart, if for nothing else then the fig tree analogy. You may know what I am talking about, but if not or as a refresher, here is the excerpt -

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."

How many times in my life have I felt like I was sitting in that tree, paralyzed by choice and the resulting indecision, often because I was trying to balance wishes and reality? At my age there is a laundry list of choices I have made and an even larger list of the choices I abandoned, some of those more painful than others. Recently I was interviewed by another Substack author, Tiffany Madvig of Self-ish, where I shared the grief I felt in giving up my dream of being a stay-at-home mother. If there was one memorable fig that I mourned once it fell, it was that one.

I think of what it means in life to make choices - how we feel when we have to make them and how our experience changes depending on our season of life or our mental state.

When you are young, the figs are bountiful and stretch higher than your imagination. There is often the thought that you can go anywhere and be anybody - and if it doesn’t work, you can do it again - figs aplenty! But then, you want to make plans, you want to settle down, you want clear direction, and the situation gets scarier. Instead of abundance, we see that sometimes to get one thing you must give up another. And as the ideas we give up fall away we wonder - have we made the right choice?!

Sometimes we want to do it all, and we even take a run at it. We know logically that stuffing ourselves is actually a terrible option - we don’t enjoy any of it and it just makes us sick but that doesn’t prevent us from trying. After all, FOMO is real and it has a nasty habit of causing us to sign up not just for things that look appealing, but for the figs other people have convinced us would be the most delicious.

On the flip-side when we just sit there, unable to make any decision at all, that often points to debilitating anxiety or depression. At points in our life, we are really concerned with what we are losing, and it becomes scary to make decisions, knowing there may be no going back. It is in those moments we may remember that reaching out for something is better than starving, and often we need it as fuel to make the next choice.

And then of course, there are the choices that we do end up making, out of want or necessity, which made us leave other choices behind. Even when we love the results of the decisions we have made, sometimes there is no getting away from the nagging “what ifs.”

All of this to say - when we make choices, we get feelings!

Over the years, this analogy has changed for me, but it is always one I come back to. Figs as choices - but sometimes I look at other ways we might observe or act upon that tree.

Now that I am in my 40’s, I can honestly say I still have the “what ifs” but I am at peace with having less choices! It seems you can relax a little when some are off the table. What is left is this moment, and what I have noticed is that there are still plenty of figs above me, and they have been patiently waiting for me this whole time. I won’t get all of them, because there are still more choices than time or resources, but I will get the ones that are meant for me.

Choices are hard, and there is grief in recognizing what has fallen away. We write about it and we talk about it and we cry about it because there are seasons in our life where we must.

I do that, but these days I also look upon a fig tree as a blessing and a symbol of confirmation. There was one on the grounds of the Bed and Breakfast we purchased then lost to foreclosure. A choice and a loss all wrapped into one, but an experience I wouldn’t want to trade. There is another on the grounds of a cemetery where I transferred to work, confirmation that I made the right decision to move my family from one city to another. Choices made…and a life I am living!

I hope that when you are wracked with indecision, or mourning the loss of what could have been, that you make the space to feel your feelings…and that the next fig you choose will be sweet.