Sylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar (which I haven’t read yet, but I came across this quote recently):

“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.”

I think I’m the same way. I keep sitting at the root of this metaphorical fig tree which has branches for just about all the different kinds of lives I could be living. However, not choosing is also a choice, and I think this is what is responsible for the “life is passing me by” feeling.

I sometimes feel an unhealthy amount of FOMO when I talk to people who’ve had life experiences that are different than mine. They make me question all the choices I’ve made so far - “have I been playing it too safe?” “maybe I should start doing what they’re doing too?” “have I wasted the last 5 years of my life?”

However, that’s just stupid. Every single person out there will have had different life experiences. There is no way I’m going to be living all the different kinds of lives I could live. For example, I can’t live in two cities at the same time. It’s sad to think about, but it’s true.

It’s also freeing in a way if you think about it though. When I started imagining my decisions like branches of a tree, I started feeling more comfortable about making them. Picking one branch also means not picking the others. It doesn’t make sense to feel like I missed out on something when that’s a choice I made deliberately.

Prune the branches you didn’t pick, and nurture the ones you did.
It’s like doing a docker system prune -a but for your life.

Then stop sitting at the root of the fig tree; pick a branch and move forward. Choose action.