Make a fucking Fig Tree

Sylvia Plath’s fig tree has haunted me ever since I first read it in The Bell Jar. In her mind’s eye, she sits beneath a sprawling tree where each fig is a glittering possibility: a dazzling career, a passionate romance, a faraway adventure, a family, a masterpiece. But in her paralysis to choose, the figs darken, wither, and drop to the ground.

This poem, part lament, part mirror encapsulates the pressure so many of us feel to define how we will lead our lives. We are told, explicitly and implicitly, that we must choose one path, one identity, one future, and that all others must be sacrificed.

But here’s my question: must we?

I believe two things can be true at once. We can be ambitious and uncertain. We can commit deeply and still hold space for curiosity. We don’t have to exist in a stalemate, trapped in perpetual contemplation about which path is “right.”

Why not climb the tree instead?

Instead of letting the figs fall, what if we reached for each one when it was ripe? Careers can be built in chapters. Passions can overlap. A single lifetime can hold multitudes if we are willing to disrupt the myth of the one true calling. Below is Plath’s fig tree passage, in her own words, followed by images of fig trees from around the world, reminders that possibility doesn’t have to wither. Sometimes, we can have the entire tree. And sometimes, the greatest joy is in climbing.