Choosing figs and courage: lessons from “The Bell Jar” for 2026 | Opinion
There are books that I am never really through with, and Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” is one. I always know exactly where it is on my bookshelves, and every once in a while, I find myself taking it down merely to feel its worn cover and to reread this passage:
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree…. 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 Europe and Africa and South America… 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.”
Upon my first reading of Plath’s book, years ago, the profound truth encapsulated in these words spoke to me as very few literary passages have. There is a lesson in that passage. It is a lesson I needed to learn. And, oddly enough, I have continued to learn it again and again.
We are on the cusp of a new year. Plath’s book has found its way onto my desk yet again. I am imagining myself in the crotch of that green fig tree, looking, again, at all the possibilities beckoning and winking. I am 84 years old, and yet there are fat purple figs that I have yet to taste. Will I choose one? It’s up to me. All I have to do is reach out, grasp what is hanging tantalizingly at my fingertips and, in making it my own, experience the rich juiciness it offers.
When I first started writing this piece, I thought I wanted to offer a challenge to start the new year by trying something brand new — entering uncharted waters, being brave enough to pick something never before tested and see what lay beyond the picking.
But I just couldn’t make it work. I struggled, wrote, rewrote and erased. Only then did I know what I wanted to impart in this piece, and that is this: We’ve all made choices. We’ve all picked a “fig” and wondered what to do next. Because picking it is not the end, it is only the beginning. There it is in the palm of our hand, but it’s without value until we take the next step.
Can we, at the beginning of a new year, reexamine choices we have made, opportunities we have taken and honestly assess what we’ve made of them? Have we taken the steps necessary to make something of value out of the myriad choices that sit before us every day?
Most of us live in the midst of plenty — just like the woman in the crotch of Plath’s green fig tree. Are we brave enough to choose and then make use of our choice? Or will we sit amongst plenty, but then do nothing more and starve to death anyway?
On my desk, I have permanently affixed a clipping that says, “Courage is knowing it might hurt; and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that’s why life is hard.” Hard or not, I’m determined to go for it. That’s all I can do with each moment.
Sometimes, dear reader, it’s worth the risk. Can we love more? Encourage more? Put our own interests aside long enough to look someone in the eye and give them our undivided attention laced with compassion? I believe that this is courage, but there are those who see my way of life as stupidity.
Ah well, let it be so. I have decided the joy I find when I see joy in others is worth any risk.
What about you? Are you willing to risk “stupidity” by re-examining the choices you’ve made? Do you have the courage to explore what’s deep at the center of your being, knowing it might hurt? You know that place — it’s the place where our values reside and our love bubbles and churns and spills out. Go there, my friend.
Our figs are meant to be eaten. Sometimes that takes courage. But stupidity? Never.
Bunny Stevens lives in Modesto, her hometown, and has served on The Modesto Bee Community Advisory Board. She is the opening courtesy clerk at the Safeway supermarket on McHenry Avenue and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. Reach her at BunnyinModesto@gmail.com
This story was originally published January 1, 2026 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Choosing figs and courage: lessons from “The Bell Jar” for 2026 | Opinion."