In a famous passage in her novel, The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath wrote about a fig tree where the character sees the collection of figs as alternative lives, ripe for the choosing:

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.

The Bell Jar was published in 1963 but the image of Plath’s fig tree has endured as a symbol of choice and loss, of the inevitable passage of a single life.

The image of the fig tree teaches us the necessity of self-acceptance, despite the constraints, opportunities and conditions we each face. We know that there are always choices, but that ultimately we can live only one life. We know that our time is limited. We know that each of us is living the best way we know how, however flawed and confused that may be. The fig tree reminds us of our responsibility to do our best with the life we have, and to accept the choices we have and have not made.

While it’s understandable to grieve over the rotting figs, of what could have been, of alternative lives unlived, accepting their loss can bring relief. Sometimes having too much choice, too many options, can make a decision feel overwhelming, so accepting that there is ultimately only one choice at any one time, removes the weight of responsibility, of fear in making a ‘wrong’ decision. There must always be a life left behind. This realisation helps us forgive ourselves for the chances we do not take, and to do our best with the ones we do.

This acceptance can also free us to admire others: the others who lived those lives we did not, who made the other choices, and took the other paths. From this perspective, we can appreciate others’ achievements, and be reminded of the contributions we all make in the collective of humankind.