the bell jar

pg.240

rating: 4.5/5

“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 constant in 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.” (plath, p.77)

i think there are certain books you read that fundamentally alter the way you perceive the world, and for me, nothing has ever come close to this passage (and this book but that doesn’t mean this book doesn’t have its flaws). i don't think i'll ever be able to look at the idea of choice, possibility or even the passage of time in quite the same way again.

there is something so utterly beautiful and devastating about the realization that a life full of possibilities can be just as paralyzing as one without any. that we can become so consumed by all the lives we could potentially live that we forget to actually live the one happening in front of us. and what makes this passage so affecting is that it captures a kind of grief we don't often acknowledge. the grief of all the people we will never become, all the futures we will never experience and all the versions of ourselves we must inevitably leave behind or let go.

i think there is a particular sadness in recognizing that indecision is not the absence of a choice. that time continues to pass regardless of whether we're ready to make one. and there is something both terrifying and (strangely) liberating about understanding that we cannot preserve every possibility forever (even if we wanted to). to choose a life is, in some sense, to mourn the others but it is also the only way we ever really get to live one.

seriously i adore this quote so much that it was in my convocation speech lol.