The Fig Tree Analogy

The Sliding Doors Which Define Your Future

E. O. Milne

‘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.’

THESE ARE THE WORDS OF SYLVIA PLATH IN HER BOOK ‘THE BELL JAR’. It talks of life in the idea of a fig tree, in which every branch and fruit is that of a different future. On one branch there is a beautiful future with great happiness and in another, the fruit falls rotten to the ground.

This idea is otherwise known as Sliding Doors. There are endless possibilities that make our future, and yet a single thing can change your life forever.

This idea, although sounding very much surreal, is something that makes up our day-to-day life. It is what shapes us and makes the world how it is. No matter how hard we try, we cannot control our own lives, and these small decisions make us incapable of keeping this control. You could be a moment away from death; all it would take is a decision or action to make it occur.

It is for better or worse, but what Sylvia Plath talks about in her book is very current. We still question things like this today and will for years to come because the problem we have as humans is that we are indecisive. We are always afraid that we are going to make the wrong decision.

Sometimes you choose the wrong fig, and it turns out rotten. But the thing that we need to understand is that in the end you must decide, no matter the outcome.

And the idea of overthinking something is unnecessary when you need to live life without the anxiety of thinking in the past. You need to enjoy the little things in the present and when opportunities come before you, you do not need to overthink something once your decision has been made. Because there is no changing it.

There is a movie based on this idea known as Sliding Doors. It is a story divided in two, where a woman has two different lives. In one life, she is heading home from work and gets on the train. She then comes to find her husband having an affair, and she changes. In another life, she sees herself missing her train and, in the end, lives not knowing what her husband had done. And even though this is a maximised version of this idea, it still shows the thought very well.

Sometimes we need to pick the wrong fruit and go down the wrong path because the moment we are given a chance again, we know to always avoid that branch. The art of comprehension and learning is tested and made stronger when we fail and most of the time, a small wrong decision is not going to alter your entire life.

In one life, you may have chosen the wrong answer on the test, but by regretting it and making a big deal out of it, you never learn and think about it in a different mindset.

But on the other hand, there is a question about what we would do if we could go back and change what we had done wrong. In the movie About Time, it shares the idea that you could travel back in time every time you made an error. But if we were given this opportunity, should we take it?

Because by changing one thing. Would that mean we would change what occurred after? Would we change failing the HSC when the result later was a job that made you happy? How do you know that just because something did not go to plan, it really was a bad outcome overall?

Because then again, just because you do badly or not as well as you would have hoped in anything does that make something in a general term, bad, does it?

However, in the end, we as humans would not be the same if we did not have freedom in our decisions. We will always have opportunities ahead of us, like branches of a tree, and they may not always be right. But it is the way in which you move forward that shows the strength of your character. Do you keep going and persevere, or do you mourn your loss?

And when I say this, I do not mean that grievance and regret are wrong. They are emotions like any other. But it is about understanding when it is time to carry on and move forward.

Because why should one bad thing bring down your future?