keeping all the figs

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.
- Sylvia Plath

I've come across the quote one too many times in recent reading. As someone who has many side quests planned in life (I love trying new things, and I'm admittedly a jack of all, great at few type of person), I've come to disagree with the passage, or at least its popular interpretation. Plath herself even admits a page later (this quote is taken from her book The Bell Jar ) that she was hungry when she wrote the quote and felt much better after eating.

You can have more than one fig if you don't crave the external validation from others. In fact, I feel quite happy with my many figs, though they might not be the biggest, sweetest fig. Figure skating, playing instruments, reading, running, mathematics problems, sudoku puzzles, cooking are all figs of mine. Note that they aren't Olympic figure skating champion, Chopin competition winner, IMO finalist, Michelin-star chef, Sudoku champion (?). I'm happy enough to pursue these as hobbies, and doing them for my own sake and amusement rather than acquiring a proud label with which I can identify myself. I am not any one thing, and I think it's beautiful when people dedicate time to things they're not that great at, things they do just for pleasure and curiosity without any grand end goal. Of course, being really good at something is great too--I am always inspired by the fruits of my friends' endeavors (speedcubing, climbing, BART speedrunning). But what I'm getting at is that not everything you do has to be done with the goal of inspiring someone else, or connecting with others. It can be simply for a relationship with yourself :)

side note: one of my neighbors has an amazing fig tree, I can't wait to eat some in august