Making a life-changing decision is hard, and most of that difficulty comes from the fact that you truly do not know what that decision will lead to — and this is something we must make peace with.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself increasingly subject to tough decision-making in ways that I have never experienced before. Seeing as I am approaching graduation, it seems like everyone around me is going through these newfound feelings of free will also. Whether it be choosing between graduate programs, new career paths or simply outgrowing the lives we’ve created throughout our undergraduate degrees, it feels like things are changing for everyone.
These life changes feel markedly different. They are not the run-of-the-mill life changes that we often plan years ahead as we follow the common steps on the trajectory to beginning adulthood.
I am beginning to find that many life changes are distinct in that they spawn from sudden decision-making that you don’t always expect to undergo. To complicate matters more, the answers to these decisions are not often obvious, but instead messy and ambiguous.
The toughest thing to get used to about these situations is that there is often no wrong answer. The decision usually boils down to the simple choice between changing or staying the same, though obviously, this choice proves to be anything but simple.
During evolutionary phases in our lives, sometimes this decision making is complicated by the natural urge to envision how our lives might look in, say, 20 years from now if we follow through with our choice, whether that be taking a new job, entering a new relationship, returning to school or moving away. This overwhelming introspective aspect of decision making is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy from her 1963 novel The Bell Jar.
In her novel, Plath compares all of the hypothetical lives she could live to figs on a fig tree, examining them all from afar:
“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.”
However, Plath’s narrator becomes overwhelmed by all of the choices that lie before her, and deeply mournful at the prospect of losing out on any hypothetical happiness that could come from each life she envisions. Out of fear of making the wrong decision and the intense feelings of loss that come alongside finally choosing a path and seeing the rest be discarded, Plath’s narrator remains paralyzed in indecision as the rest of the world keeps moving.
“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,” writes Plath.
Plath perfectly encapsulates the conflict that comes with knowing that many decisions do not have an objectively correct answer; each decision simply prompts a life change that will lead you down a different path. It is impossible to say if the path will be easier or harder, or better or worse, all you can know is that it will be different.
Countless users online feel that Plath’s fig tree analogy resonates deeply with the difficulty of decision making. Though she encapsulates the struggle of picking a life path, it is important to note that Plath’s novel has been described as “very triggering and depressing,” as she depicts the realities of going through mental health struggles.
Some users online have taken the basis of Plath’s fig tree analogy — the intense struggle, longing and inner conflict that comes from decision making — and rejected the notion that one’s figs could ever rot. I find this resolve entirely comforting, and in fact, quite accurate.
Though you may be forced to choose — and continuously reconsider — the various paths your life takes, making one decision does not mean every other opportunity is entirely lost. Picking one fig will bring you to another fig tree, and picking a fig off that tree will do the same thing.
It is easy to say, “embrace the unknown,” but it is a lot harder to put it in practice. At the end of the day, every decision isn’t the end of your world as you know it. Things are always changing, but all that means is that there will always be a new fig for you to grasp.