At the beginning of my junior year at the age of a sophomore, graduating a year early, it suddenly hit me that I needed to have my life figured out. While struggling to make a firm decision on what I wanted my life to look like, I thought back to a cherished quote from Sylvia Plath called the “Fig Tree.” In this quote, she compares her inability to choose a certain path in life with the nature of a fig tree. She writes, “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.”
I often find myself stuck, pondering upon the vast ocean of possibilities, craving each path, yet failing to consume one as my own, fearing another could have satiated me more. With this predicament, I find it very challenging to choose a certain career path or even illustrate the life I wish to pursue after high school. The options are limitless; I could take a gap year, travel the world, register for college, start a business, or marry a rich prince and move abroad. All these pose a different reality I could live in later on, but my uncertainty and indecisiveness are the sole factors diminishing all the opportunities that await me.
Having a great desire for knowledge expands my imagination and serves as a beneficial characteristic in any career I wish to pursue, however, it is not ideal when narrowing down a singular field for the rest of my life. Although switching majors is an option, as well as specializing in more than one, I tend to stray away from those ideas due to an underlying belief that one fig will someday be just right for me. One shiny green fig may glisten with a suggestive future of law while another purple fig tempts the idea of medical. Or how about the ripe fig in the back calling out for engineering?
I stare at the pale dotted ceiling, tossing and turning in my messy bed, imagining this fig tree as Plath once did, running the constant thought of, “What if?” in my mind. I hopelessly dream of one to call out, selecting itself for me.
These thoughts echoed in my head until I drove myself to the point of exhaustion. After a long period of self-reflection, I registered the severity of the situation and how fear was influencing my actions. Once I accepted the reality, I attempted to overcome these doubts by changing my mindset. I reminded myself that no matter what I choose, it’s not going to have a world-shattering impact. No one would blame me for choosing something simple or even something I genuinely favor.
With this analogy, it taught me that the future may hold countless possibilities but I cannot aimlessly wait for one to choose me without taking action myself. I can’t be plagued with an irrational fear of choosing the wrong career while allowing all the options to slip out of my grasp. The future is ever-changing and the greatest step forward is to conduct a plan that is befitting to the present and can adapt to the future. Much like a fig, doors do not stay open endlessly, relying on you to enter them. They decay with time, leaving you the responsibility of choosing to indulge or discard.
