For those few who do stumble upon my blog, you may remember an
older post of mine about people who work at jobs they don't really love. I think about this topic a lot and it seems that many other people do also because I got a few responses from people I didn't even know look at my blog. It was so great to hear others feelings and views about this and I hope you all feel free to share your thoughts as well.
Warning: This post does not contain any life-altering answers, just more thoughts.
I want to make the world a better place. I want to travel the world. I want to help people. I want to experience SO MANY THINGS. There are just too many things I want to do that I don't know what to do next.
This is a quote that one of my roommates pointed out to me that describes my feelings perfectly:
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, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7
This was exactly how I felt. The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that life isn't this black and white. I don't necessarily have to choose one fig and all the others rot away. Life is more like a real fig tree, one that blooms and ripens each season, with new beautiful figs to choose from, some that we would never have imagined would ever grow on our tree. There is comfort in this thought so that if I do choose to get a steady job somewhere with a steady paycheck and health insurance and rent to pay, I know that there is a season for each fig that I choose and next season...there will be more.
