figs and life

I saw Curiouser, a play from Skin Horse theater, at the New Orleans Fringe Festival last weekend. It was a lovely side-by-side of two lives that were not as disparate as they initially seem: Lewis Carroll and Sylvia Plath. A quote from The Bell Jar was used in the play, and I think it impacted all the twentysomethings in the group, including myself. So, a look at a metaphor in hopes it may give us a grasp on the real thing.

"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 off-beat 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