Uncertainty seems to be a common theme in my life. Big or small, I am uncertain. Uncertain about tomorrow or next year or the year after that. Before reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar,  I was unable to articulate this feeling meaningfully. To make it digestible to myself and others without sounding pretentiously cryptic. I would have said, “I see my future in everything and nothing” which is too obscure to relate. Of course, I could be doubting myself-maybe the phrase makes sense and the feeling is relatable. But Sylvia words it much better than I ever could. 

“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. 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.”

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar 

Wow. When I read that quote for the first time, I looked around at my empty room in disbelief and the feeling persists no matter how many times I read it. My own fig tree sprouted from my carpet and I found myself sitting by the large branches that jutted up from underneath the ground. One fig was a Lawyer, another fig an Author and another fig was a Journalist. I will bore you with the details of my existential crisis but all in all, I have a lot of figs. 

The analogy is not only remarkable because of its relatability but also because of its ability to transcend time. Although Sylvia wrote it in the ’60s, I can read it in 2021 I think to myself, “Man, Sylvia gets it.” She gets how I feel, she gets it now, she got it then, and she’ll get it 10 years from now. Plath managed to create a framework for uncertainty; one which I can stuff my worries into easily. 

However, I feel as though I am not alone in this. My fig tree is completely different from Sylvia’s, and someone else’s tree is nowhere near similar to mine, but we all share the uncertainty. Like most people my age, I am forced to decide on a future that I am not sure I want. I fear that in eating one fig I will miss out on one far more ripe.

Fixing this uncertainty requires me to trust. Trust myself to pick the right fruit and trust that each fig will be good…enough. By this, I mean that uncertainty often causes us to live in extremes, and I’ll need to trust that life will not be all bad but it won’t be all good. I’ll admit that I am a hypocrite because as I say this, I struggle to apply this philosophy to my own life. Although the crotch of this tree is comfortable, soon I’ll be hungry and a fig sounds fabulous. 

~Nirvika Dhanasri