This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”:
> "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."
What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part.
In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig only to find it rotten, or just edible. At least in some of the cases, and it won't be your fault and your success depends on how you deal with the said fig. Maybe you can still climb to another?
The quote makes more sense if you take a look at the life of its author, Sylvia Plath. [1]
She struggled with mental health issues and depression most of her life. She excelled academically and she was driven to write, but at the same time, she struggled with her own self. Her life is marked by several suicide attempts.
She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage. While she was ambitious, a deep sense of anxiety kept her from exploring and expressing her own identity through her writing.
Most of her poetry was written during a short burst of creativity, over the course of a few months, in late 1962. She died of suicide in 1963. Her famous novel, The Bell Jar, was published a month before her death. Major themes in this novel include "socially acceptable identity" and mental health. [2]
Your criticism is a certainly correct, but would have been removed to the author of the quote. As Plath received treatment and openly discussed her mental health issues, undoubtedly she was told this many times over.
> She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage.
My understanding is that Ted Hughes' contribution to Plath's mental health went beyond "mov[ing] around frequently during their short marriage" [1].
> In 2017, previously unpublished letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963 accuse Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961.
Hughes also began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill, in 1962 and (apparently) had a kid with her in 1965. Plath knew about the former and committed suicide in 1963. Wevill also killed herself as well as her child with Hughes in 1969 after, you guessed it, "Hughes began affairs with Brenda Hedden, a married acquaintance who frequented their home, and Carol Orchard, a nurse 20 years his junior, whom he would later marry in 1970" [2].
It might be too reductive to say Hughes just drove two women to suicide, but it seems like we can be confident that he had, uh, extensive personal failings?
My intention was to provide terse framing for the posted quote, rather then muse at length about the author's life, let alone that of her erstwhile husband, in their own regard.
Analysis paralysis and the paradox of choice (the idea not the book) have been known about since Aesop, though I agree that in the real world we must also make do without even knowing which paths even lead to good outcomes.
No, you can't. I'm in my mid 50s. I can't go back and change my decision (non-decision decision) to not have a family. I wanted one. The choices I made or the chances that came by depending on how you look at it got me where I am today. Mid 50s. I'm not going to birth kids. I'm also not likely to be able to change my career to anything that requires 10-15 years of study before I can get a good position in that career. Going forward I also need to choose things that payout so that I can afford to pay for my life once people won't keep giving me work.
I agree with you, that is why I said, maybe you can still reach for another. Maybe not. If things turn out differently than you though, happiness is still about how you deal with the fig you got, either on purpose or not.
You might try picking some of the figs that are at ground level and see how they taste, if good, generalize to the whole tree and decide if it’s worth the climb.
You might find someone climbing the tree and ask them if they could tell you how they taste up top.
Sitting in the crotch of the tree lamenting your situation is a fig too. We all bite into a sour one every now and again.
>What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part.
For sure, however it is better to have tried and experienced than not have. I have tried and failed at picking many of those figs, and it is worth it, the good and bad. Don't stand there, give yourself a time, and then chose freely.
for sure, depending what is important to each person. Success is a subjective. Maybe some live for exploration, and some for execution... It really just comes down to fulling what make sense for oneself. ;-)
Yes I agree, but maybe the quote means it in the sense that these were potential outcomes, which became impossible at some point. I agree it is arrogant to assume all these futures are within their grasp.
We aren't nearly as in control of our lives as we like to think, and we often construct stories and arcs to explain our paths. Actually, most of what has happened to us, whether we've been successful or not, is down to chance, starting with the family and location you were born into.
A large part of life is just luck. Think of all the chance events that had a big impact on your life. For me for example, almost all my success hinges on me randomly seeing a certain poster in a hallway in 2008.
Pretty much my entire social circle hinges on one of my sister's friends wanting to go see Iron Maiden in 2014, she asked me to go along with her, because she didn't want to go by herself.
I happened to reconnect with a childhood friend in that crowd of 15,000+ and that got the ball rolling.
Depends on your perspective, obviously. But personally I'd say we're much more a victim of circumstance than the other way around, and all success or failure is only very partially dependent on the choices we made.
I think this is something the author knew, but this is not an uncommon and painful thought many people have. It's exactly the falsity of this that makes it more painful. Of course life is far more complex than just picking, but this is a perfect example of that painful fantasy.
This reminds me of a speculative fiction story by Ted Chiang called "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" which imagines an expendable device that gives users the ability to contact alternate versions of themselves in other branches, and explores the moral and psychological consequences of learning about those outcomes: https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freed...
It reminds me a lot of "The Guy I Almost Was" (Patrick Sean Farley) http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/ . It's an old (from the early 2000s) comic about trying to get into the tech scene in the 90s. Alternate life paths are explicitly explored.
Reminds me of "Buridan's ass" named after a 14th century French philosopher who described a donkey dying of starvation while standing between two perfectly good stacks of hay, because it couldn't decide which to eat.
I am not sure why, but the quote triggered a memory of 8bit theater in my head:
"Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what is the point?"
We branch out, but we ultimately keep heading towards the very same outcome.
“Meaning” is just a construct in your head. What we perceive as “meaningful” is shaped by our biological and cultural evolution, a byproduct if you will. “Meaningfulness” is not something that exists out there, outside of our minds. When we see meaning, that’s a perspective we project on things, or a relation we have with things. It’s not a property of the things by themselves. We do crave meaning, and thus we have to come up with meaning for ourselves. Maybe it helps to realize that meaning is just something we create in our minds.
For a counterpoint, we can look to the Stoics who want us to focus on the present rather than dwell on the past:
"For although in regard of that which is already past there may be some inequality, yet that time which is now present and in being, is equal unto all men. And that being it which we part with whensoever we die, it doth manifestly appear, that it can be but a moment of time, that we then part with. For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? ... that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
"XorNot" is a title inhabited by many different people over time: the person that held that title this time last year is not you, and the "XorNot" of today will give way tomorrow to yet another person. Each can only be properly considered in the context of the situations they inherited and those left for their successors.
Another, more modern translation, from the Oxford world classics edition by Robin Hard:
14. Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same. For the present is equal for all, and what is passing must be equal also, so what can be lost is shown to be nothing more than a moment; and no one could lose either the past or the future, for how could he be deprived of what he does not possess? So always bear in mind these two points: firstly that all things are alike in nature from all eternity and recur in cycles, and it therefore makes no difference whether one sees the same spectacle for a hundred years or two hundred or for time everlasting; and secondly that the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer an equal loss; for it is solely of the present moment that each will be deprived, if it is really the case that this is all he has and a person cannot lose what he does not have.
As someone who feels like I've wasted most of my 20s since graduating university (turning 29 in 2021) with a job(s) I don't see any future in, man this hits hard. My lack of risk taking, and an unfortunately timed death in the family in 2016, really are me sitting there watching these figs dry up. Damn.
I executed a major career pivot at age 32 and now that I'm approaching 40, I'm so glad I did. It was hard but worth it. You have plenty of time, as long as you can put aside the feelings that you've waited too long and start looking for a path from your current life to the life you want. Those feelings will only hold you back. Now is a good time to pick a fig and start eating it. :)
It's never too late. I was drowning in debt a few years ago, in a bad career, and I was older than 40 [actual age undisclosed]. I don't have a solid retirement, but I'm now doing well and have some peace in my life.
My one life advice: Don't search for greatness, search for peace.
The initial diagnosis was crap. Add in some surgery and the diagnosis improved dramatically, different type. As far as a cancer diagnosis goes I got off really well in the end.
It was the initial stage where I felt I had a death sentence that shifted my outlook on life. When you think you're going to die you re-evaluate some things. I looked at my life, thought about what I'd regret, and made 5 year plans to get things on track. I'm now in the habit of setting plans for 5 years to ensure I don't regret the life I do have.
I am just a year younger and also had an unfortunate family death at the end of 2016. I have a lot of the same feelings. My current resolve is to quit my job around the time the pandemic ends, and start taking more risks with how I choose to spend my life. I am lucky to have enough savings at this point to do so. Maybe I'll figure things out a bit better before I hit the big 30. I hope you can find a path that works for you too.
Yeah, the pandemic is the only reason I'm still in my job currently. I had an option to go do a masters, but I was talking to a recruiter in that country and they mentioned how badly the market had dropped, so I decided to postpone it once again due to wanting stability in a pandemic. Hopefully it'll work out this next year.
46 year old here. Wave I remember feeling like I'd wasted so much time and was irreversibly behind in my twenties. Like, it was all decided. There are so so many figs left. Many many chances ahead of you!
That said, time is ticking and while it isn't too late, now is the best time to start!
Yeah, when I was younger I remember feeling like I kept abandoning all my ideas. Years pass, and you realize that the ideas are still there, and it's more like you're rotating between them. Which is kind of a nice way to be. Work on one for a while, set it down, go to the next one, etc.
I suppose the feeling itself came from comparing myself to others (which is natural), and it was having some success in some field relative to others that gave me the feeling like I could succeed, I wasn't behind everyone in everything, forever. I guess for the mental health aspect of this, it's probably good to pick something you are good at, better than others, and actively appreciate it. It's not good to feel completely behind in all things. Good luck! :)
> It is never too late, but do not let that be an excuse to delay any decision.
Beautiful, this is the explanation I was looking for because whenever I'd hear that "it's never too late," I just felt like that enabled procrastination, but your explanation solidified that life is not long, but rather it is short indeed. It's true that it's not too late for many of your future opportunities, but eventually, time will run out.
I certainly hope so. But man, it's a sinking feeling when so many others seem to have it figured out at an even younger age. And knowing that the clock is ticking to actually go get those figs.
If the purpose of life is the journey to get there, not the destination, how could anyone younger than you have figured it out? Life is the one thing where people will never catch up and pass you.
Fair, but I feel the journey is stopped/halted by the crippling student loan debt that will just get worse if I try to change via more education (which is likely, as I want to change countries and it's the easiest way). Really, that might be the worst part of it all, the student loan burden.
I've never really understood what this means. Did people in their 20s have their life pretty well together in the past? or does it mean when you're in your 30s is the best time to start partying and throwing caution to the wind? Is your 30s when you first leave home and get a higher education? It's really a really confusing turn of phrase to me. I must be missing context
In my parents' generation, there was a lot of pressure to have children before 30. There was a widespread belief that giving birth after 30 risked the health of the mother and the child. As medicine advanced and neonatal care greatly improved, that deadline was pushed back and women started to seriously entertain the idea of careers before having children.
There are other cultural and societal factors at play, but the greater longevity and better medical care have opened up the time period for the expectations that previous generations had for their 20s.
It’s also not just about giving birth, but a woman’s body is probably far better at recovery after birth in their 20s than 30s.
Not to mention the energy to keep up with little ones, and if you ever want the option of more than 2 kids. And of course if you’re 30+ when you have kids, and your kids are 30+ when they have kids, you are pushing 65 to 70+ which makes playing with the grandkids not as much fun and you’re soon to be less of an asset in terms of help and possibly a liability for your kids due to declining health.
On the other hand, you may have increased your chances at having a higher paying career, but I suspect, for many, the extra savings don’t quite make up for the trade offs.
Also a good point, trade offs all around to consider!
I had mine in 30 to 35 range, but if I could go back in time and had found my spouse, I think I would have opted to have them in 25 to 30 range. However, no one in my social circles has kids in their 20s and barely anyone is married by 30 so we also may have been socially isolated if we had chosen to do that.
But I try to think back to what I did in my 25 to 30 range that I thought was worth delaying starting a family and I can’t come up with anything, other than being a little bit further ahead in the rat race. But all the other rats are thinking the same thing, so who is really benefiting?
So it would seem the trend is very much to settle and stabilize in your 30's. I do hope we figure out even better and safer ways to allow women to give birth a little later, if they so choose.
It also seems useful to become a parent with that extra decade of life experience. And if we incentivize exercise in the later years, it could offset the "feeling tired at 70" thing? My fiancé's grandpa runs marathons and honestly has more energy than I do!
Most of what we do in our 20s doesn’t seem that important after the fact (unless you’re an Olympic athlete or otherwise very lucky) but I think it’s an important part of growing up and feeling secure — in yourself, your career, and your relationship. All three types of security are very important to being a good parent.
You can't have kids when you are in your 20s if you are a man who cannot find a woman willing to date you who also wants to have kids while you are in your 20s.
The bottleneck is the same as it is for any issue regarding children.
This is interesting because I'm 25 and sometimes worry that I'm going to miss out on the opportunity to start a solid family. It feels so difficult to find anyone my age who wants more than just a fling, and women in their 30s don't even bother with someone my age or they already have kids. From what you're saying, maybe I'm not going to miss out, I'm just thinking about it too soon.
Don’t sweat it too much. I feel like my life got a lot more stable in my 30s. I moved countries, met my now wife, bought a house together, had two kids and finally married. Even personally and career wise it’s been a period of stability and growth.
I also don’t think you’re thinking about things too soon. We’re all slightly different. Also don’t make decisions for other people by writing them off. Just because they present one way doesn’t make that the sum total of who they are. You’ll need to have relationships in order to meet someone to have kids with.
Most people would be married with families by their late 20s. Now many enter into a sort of second childhood and settle down in their 30s or beyond. Hell, I still have some acquaintances from school who are slowly transitioning into the creepy old guy hitting on 24 year olds.
I've always taken it to be about your peak - when life is at its best. In your 20s, you're generally in good health, maintain a good social network from school or college, active social life, etc. I'm in my early 40s and feel like I have it more together now than in the past: fewer but better friendships, more interesting conversations, more means to do what I want in terms of travel or entertainment.
Studied physics with the intent to go to grad school. Realized after graduating I didn't want to do it because of the perverse incentives in academia (I'd still love to do research and get a PhD eventually if I can fund it myself and not be reliant on academia). Worked as a substitute teacher for a year, then in a mortgage bank for a year. Left that to accept a Fulbright grant, which I eventually had to decline because of the death in the family at the worst possible timing.
Since then I've been a teacher. Looking at pivoting into finance in Ireland/Europe (with a masters in Quantitative Finance) next year; was planning on doing it this year but, y'know, corona kinda destroyed finance jobs over there and I'd need a work visa (thankfully it's a high need field so it's a bit easier)...
Forgive my nerding. This week I've been playing dark souls. I couldn't commit to a plan this time around and so now I'm part mage, part rogue, part knight, and I can't use any of the good weapons and I have like five weapons all partly upgraded. My figs all rotted and my character is just so mediocre.
It's definitely easier to commit to one path. I've played bloodborne and DS3 twice and dark souls remastered once. I completed all my playthroughs with a quality melee build. Despite these 5 playthroughs, my understanding of the game is quite narrow. I have no idea what playing as a sorcerer, pyromancer etc would be like, so at least you get that.
Fantastic analogy. To go a bit further, what surprised me when trying to choose which branch to take was how narrow each branch is. It’s not enough to pick the “software development” branch, you have to pick a specialty within that.
And, it has to be a single specialty. In my particular case, it was hard to accept that I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer.
Should you really dig in and focus on mobile, web, server, game, firmware? If so, should you focus on one language?
I don't so much question paths in my life as I feel very lucky to have ended up where I am. I do question on a daily basis, whether I should stop learning and adopting new technologies, and focus on ONE domain for the rest of my life.
It seems I am destined to be a jack of all trades, master of none, if I let life continue to unfold as it has over the last 10 years, bumping around as needed from my employers to new or different domains.
There's probably an analogy here in cost of task switching. Switch too much and one finds themselves with too many tasks and too little time. Switch too little and the doings or learnings may become monotonous. As with most things good, it takes skill to play it well.
Maybe, but you could be a successful programming language designer and a hobbyist game developer. Depends how you define success. Making money at games is something very few do, but many have fun just for the creative outlet.
While Diogenes was relaxing in the morning sunlight, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand out of my sunlight." Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes." "If I were not Diogenes, I would still wish to be Diogenes," Diogenes replied.
Reminds me of the game of Go. Infinite possibilities in the beginning, but as the game progresses the end state of the board becomes clearer and clearer. Also, you can't have it all, sometimes you try to control the whole board and end up losing a lot of what you could have had.
That book contains some the finest writing ever done in the English language. Her ability to capture emotions and present them in detail-perfect images is breathtaking.
Reminds me of the famed Jacques Brel song 'La chanson de Jacky' - He sings through many possible exotic futures for himself, but what he really wants to do is return to his childhood where he can be "Beau, beau, beau et con à la fois" ("Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and stupid at the same time")
I don't expect everyone to love Jordan Peterson, but how badly he is maligned by so many people really disappoints me. His maps of meaning lectures on youtube were hugely inspiring (and entertaining), and part of the reason I married my girlfriend and had our daughter. I attended one of his conversation/debates with Sam Harris in Vancouver and that was a lot of fun as well.
The dude is really hard to understand. He says a lot of stuff that just seems like vague unactionable self-help advice.
So I err on the side of caution by assuming he isn't worth listening to. He also reeks of certainty, like I'm wrong just for asking what the fuck he's trying to tell me because it's so obvious... to him.
The clip that OP linked to is a 9 minute segment of a semester long, graduate level psychology class. It shouldn't be surprising that it is hard to follow without some additional context.
He often uses false dichotomies to advocate his views, for example, the left is against freedom and liberty, you have to decide if you are for the Gulag Archipelago society or a capitalistic society etc; as if they were the only two possible options.
I can possibly sift through YouTube to get to the videos where he claims these things, but it will not be the most palatable of chores.
Having just gone through and looked up a bunch of articles criticizing Jordan Peterson (Most of them seem to be written by Matt McManus, so I guess he's trying to make some sort of name for himself by association), it seems to me that basically the people who like Peterson like him for his life advice and the people that don't like him don't like him because of his political and philosophical views.
I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
Also I guess I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became. I think being catapulted to fame like that is bound to mess up pretty well everyone and probably also muddy their message quite a bit.
I mean, at its core none of the things Peterson has to say are really all that revolutionary, they are pretty basic life advice. "Take responsibility for your life", etc.
Obviously there is an unmet need for that basic life advice because people (particularly young men) ate it up.
One article complained about him relaying a story of getting a kid to eat. My only conclusion is the person that was complaining doesn't have kids, because his story was extremely relatable, and I'd guess basically universal among parents.
Anyway, yes if you try putting Jordan Peterson up on a pedestal, he'll probably fall off it. If you view him as someone that maybe could give some good advice while you'd otherwise just be killing time anyway, I guess I think he holds up to that metric pretty well.
> I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
No, he has a long established pattern of attracting a crowd by talking about basic self-help and then sneak in politically charged ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... , "people are lobsters", and plenty of sexism.
> I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became.
You can't pick and choose the context: a person is responsible for they say in public.
Besides, even as a university professor a person is responsible for speaking honestly.
> being catapulted to fame ... muddy their message quite a bit.
No, he was playing the same tricks since the beginning. There are a lot of old videos on youtube.
I agree with what you are saying, but there is a huge gap between a pedestal and the advocacy of evidently false and polarizing dichotomies -- Gulag or conservative capitalism, pick one; terrorists attack us because they hate our freedom etc, etc.
Given the yard stick / metric you are measuring him with there would be teeming millions who would qualify -- anyone who is capable of a half decent parenting. In the kind of life advice he offers, Peterson feels quite unremarkable.
I live in the US and not that interested in US politics, so no dog in the fight -- just an fly on the wall observation.
Also the same guy who bashes established disorders like ADHD publicly and the whole field of psychiatry(calling them engineers) saying the disorder has deep psychological roots, while himself taking anti-depressants to treat his depression isn't someone worth listening to for anything substantial. This dude thinks a disorder like ADHD is just bad conscientiousness that can be fixed by reading his 12 step book.
Perhaps for some the placebo effect is enough, and Peterson becomes their savior with devotees.
I don't know, I've listened to some of his stuff and what doesn't come across as simplistic platitudes has baked in assumptions that seem unnecessary, like defining truth to be an evolutionarily useful principle.
That he inspires people doesn't surprise me, the religion of my youth did the same and was more hokum than Peterson's mythological substrate mappings.
> "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."