As someone who was an avid reader growing up, it is a shock that I haven’t so much as touched a book now that I am older. But there is a reason for this. My biggest motivator for reading was that there were millions of books, and I wanted to read all of them because I didn’t want to miss out on a great book.
Of course, it would be impossible to read all the books in the world, so I just stopped. I didn’t read anymore after realizing that, because if I couldn’t read them all, then why even try to read a few?
I never knew that there was an explanation for this until I read the book, “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. The thing that stuck out the most to me was her analogy about a fig tree, which I related to heavily.
In summary, the fig tree is an analogy for all different goals, pathways, or lives. Sylvia depicts each fig as a different aspiration and how they are all ripe and amazing. This leads her to run into the problem of not knowing which she should choose because they are all good, but she won’t know until she tries them. This leads her to not choose any of them because she wouldn’t know if she chose the best one without trying all of them. So she just watches them all rot and fall to the ground, so in the end, she doesn’t get to eat any of the figs.
I realized that I stopped reading because if I could read all of the amazing books, then I just shouldn’t read any of them, in fear of missing out. I wouldn’t know which book is the best without reading them all, but since that is impossible, I should just not read any, so I don’t know what I am missing out on.
This relates to my entire life, as I had so many different careers, passions, and dreams that I wanted to accomplish, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do them all. This held me back from pursuing any of them. I would get instant satisfaction in just thinking about them and dreaming about the multiple potential paths, which was enough to not actually pursue any of them. This was my mindset for the longest time.
But now I am trying to change by actually trying to pick one at a time and trying them. I would rather be able accomplish a few of them, than not even try to do any of them. So if anyone resonates with this, then I would highly suggest reading “The Bell Jar”. If you relate to my situation, then my piece of advice to you is to pick a fig off your fig tree because once you taste how sweet it is, then you will find the courage to pick another and another fig, until you run out, and then you grow new figs.
