I’ve been 19 for five months now and, to be honest, I wasted a lot of time thinking of the person that I could be now, not the person that I can be. The person people might like more, but not the person they already value.
A ballerina dancing to Adam: Gissle, a bassist in a band if I never put it down, drinking wine with my ex’s grandmother in Carlsbad Bay, watching the sunset in the upstairs patio, but he just had to have a (not so) charming personality. Each fig turned into its own unique shade of purple. One more darker than the next, wilted. But the richer the color, the riper the taste.
Each of these figs is within reach, waiting for me to grab. Plath’s fig tree touches women across the world with the articulation of a stuffed dream. Some took her word as a signal to do the things you love before time runs out. Have we ever stopped to ask if there really is such a thing as too late?
To understand her words to the fullest its takes coming plucking in between the lines to see Plath’s true meaning in her analogy.
Sylvia Plath, her words, and her legacy
Sylvia Plath, born October 27, 1932, in Boston, was an influential female author and poet known for her works tackling the taboo topics of sexual, mental health, and addiction. Her book The Bell Jar stemmed from her experience of getting rejected from her dream writing program, leading her to a depressive episode (me too girl). The story follows an unnamed student who navigates the model scene of New York, sorority life as a writer, and a descent into mental health struggles from the restraints of social norms.
Much of what was written in the book was parallel to Plath’s personal experience in the judgment she faced for chasing a profession in writing. The center of The Bell Jar leads to the fig tree analogy “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, The Bell Jar). She shows the turmoil in having to choose one of the others, saying, “One fig was a husband and a happy home and children,” sprouting from the standard of a future society set for women, while the other bloomed for her dreams, “another fig was a famous poet.”
While it’s universal to see dreams whisper past us as the days do, that’s just time. Every winter the leaves fade away, giving life to the ground, the spring the grow, the summer we bask in its glory, the fall the amber-like colors are worn like a badge of the journey and the one they will go through once more.
its more than just a fig tree analogy, it’s my fig tree
The figs may die and fall at our feet, but the tree isn’t. As long as the tree stands strong, there are more dreams to come and ripen. So yes, YOU are the tree; there is no magical force besides yourself making these dreams.
Get up and pick up the bass. Get up and reach for the ballet slippers in the closet. Get. Up. The figs will fall on the ground if we don’t make the attempt to reach for them while they are ripe.
Of course, we can’t go for all of them, but that doesn’t digress from the fact that we can reach for what we can. Those dreams hanging loose are not daft expectations; they are the person I want to become, and you as well. Dwelling in sadness is for the fall. This spring, dust yourself off, and let’s do things a little differently, on our feet with arms open.
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