4. The Fig Tree

I want to be an encyclopaedia of lives and ideas – I want to know everything about everything.

I will be turning 21 four weeks from now, and as the number of my life increases, I can’t help but feel smaller each year. Like I haven’t moved and just stayed in the same spot as I was in last year. I wouldn’t call it lazy; I’d describe it as a paralysis.

Every now and then I catch myself looking at the profiles of people I used to attend high school with, just out of curiosity to see where they are in life – many of them have gone out to see the world, some in relationships with their high school sweethearts, some have expanded on their experiences for their life careers. I can’t help but feel this overwhelming paralysis in the face of expectation, like by now I should’ve become something, meant to have aimed, achieved and succeeded – like my story should be half filled with chapters to tell.

‘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 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.’

So here I am not knowing what I want to do with my life, not because I have few passions or because I am unsure of what I want, but because I possess many of them, I am haunted by the want to be every version of myself, I want to be an encyclopaedia of lives and ideas, I want to know everything about everything – yet I know I can’t taste every fig and I hate the idea that choosing one life means grieving the others. Each fig is an overflowing fountain I’ve only dipped my toes into and so the idea of time consumes me because what if I never have the chance to bathe in each pool. I want to be great, but in a generation like ours, being great isn’t enough.

I can never read all the books I want, I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want, I can never train myself in all the skills I want – and why exactly is it that I want?, I want because I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variants of mental and physical experiences possible in my life but I am horribly limited. It is exhausting to want so much yet when you stand in front of your life, all you see is fragments, a trail of unfinished attempts – the worst part of it all is that I still continue to want to be everything.

Fearing of deciding isn’t about failing at trying everything, the scariest part is that I’ll fail at everything, that I’ll come to the end of this life and go out with the realisation that I was never good at anything.

Maybe that’s what it is – that even though you don’t have to be good at something to have a meaningful life and joy can exist in mediocrity, deep within me all I want is to be remembered for something, to be more than just fragments.

Maybe I just want the feeling of being good at something, the relief of knowing I belong somewhere, the validation that I am not just passing through life without leaving a trace – and I guess that’s where the satisfaction that comes in,  from thinking of yourself in different possibilities, feeding on the illusion and greed of having multiple lives and experience different successes whilst the one life you do have is passing by without you pursuing a singular fig.

Theres a contradiction that arises from wanting, it’s a mess between doubt and commitment, because to want is to commit. I want to be everything, but I don’t want to spend the time it takes to be one thing, I want to master a craft, like play the violin, but I want to taste all the other arts too, I want to be special, but I don’t want to endure the ordinary years it takes to become so. Time is a terrifying thing, and committing to something means the ticking will commence on whether you succeed.

As I sit at the crotch of this fig tree, starving myself to death because I just can’t make up my mind on which fig to choose which one to taste and savour, I come to terms that it isn’t about choice at all, but rather about doubt. It is doubt that paralyses my body when I stand before this tree of life, it’s not only an inconvenience, but it is also grief – doubt of not enjoying the richness of the one fig I finally choose as I expected I would, and grieving all the other figs I could’ve devoured instead. Grieving the time I had lost or the potential I could’ve had.

As I lay here under the branches, eyes tracing each fig like a possibility, like a life that could be. The perfect figs, untouched goals still within reach. The bruised figs, mistakes maybe worth making and the rotten figs—those struck something deeper as they are the what ifs left too long., the dreams that deferred until decay. And then it hit me like a sharp breath: waiting doesn’t preserve anything—it only delays the rot.

What if I am not the person who is choosing the figs – but rather I am the tree itself growing them. Choices are always fleeting, what makes us human and sustains us through life are our roots, and our ability to whether change. The fig tree roots runs deep and blooms in seasons. The tree itself doesn’t worry when a fig falls and rots, because it knows it will bare new ones. Doors are opening and closing all the time, just like how a fig tree loses figs and grows new ones.

It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to also come to the acceptance that not every fig needs to be picked – sometimes you’ll see its leaves accompanied by ripe figs, would you go to pick at its branches knowing that its sweetness has not yet prospered, that its bitter taste will displease your honeyed cravings? – realistically no, so why rush into picking it when you know your present self is still yet to bloom. And simply put, not every life path is meant to be walked by you, some figs may have to be sacrificed for another fig – by this I don’t mean giving up what you want, I mean the things that aren’t essential, the things that don’t carve out the essence of your desires but the things people ‘ expect from you’. You are the tree, you are who grows these opportunities, and they are for no one to pick from but yourself.

Now at almost 21, My paralysis slowly begins to release me, I feel my leg twitch, allowing me to move forward and then my arm, allowing me to reach – I am the one who is nurturing these choices and growing them, yes, I am trying to choose, but at the same time – it is still all me. Because if I couldn’t bare all these figs, then I wouldn’t have the desire to want them all. The worst part isn’t picking the wrong fig, it is the time passing as we sit and be indecisive, it’s watching potential rot right in front of you, not because it wasn’t yours, but because you were too afraid to reach out.

Another take is that just because a fig falls, doesn’t mean it instantly shrivels up, it begins to rot with time and abandonment. Time is not unlimited, but that doesn’t mean we must have a deadline for when we need to achieve, why not collect all the figs  in a basket, have a little taste of each one, make a jam out of the rest so on some mornings you can return to it, to spread on a piece of bread.

Because truth is, us as humans are never fulfilled, we will always crave more with every fibre within our bodies, so deciding on one thing is more so suffocating rather than liberating – something within us wants more, we can’t just simply rest.  They key is to keep moving, to never stay still – don’t allow making a singular decision paralyse your body. Why settle for one, when you can explore many things, this life has to offer, for we are not managed by time, we are the ones who manage time.