How much fruit can we eat before our lives are over?

"I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest." (Malachi Lefurgey/AQ)

Can we truly and realistically do it all? Work, family, school, love? Where do our passions live in the balance of work and life?

Imagine, when you are born, a tree is born somewhere in the world at the exact moment you are. This tree is your life.

Growing from the sun, rain, snowstorms, thunderstorms, everything life is throwing your way.  

As we get older, the tree's roots get stronger. Building a sturdy foundation, a trunk sprouting with branches and leaves.  

Within these branches, apples, figs, peaches, pears, whatever fruit you want is growing. 

At the core of these fruits are all the life aspirations you want. From love, career, family, and anything you want to be, to places you want to see.  

We have all heard that quote by Sylvia Plath about her own fig tree in which she says, “I saw my life branching out before me ... I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I wanted to choose. I wanted each and every one of them.” 

Plath watched as her figs began to wrinkle and fall to the ground. She leaves it there: taking too long to pluck a fig and take a bite; life choices gone from a single mistake.  

Is that true, though? Once we choose to bite into our desired fruit, are we bound to the taste without ever having the opportunity to taste another? I like to believe not. 

Even though that mental battle always ends up at a crossroads, as a human, I think we need to be optimistic.  

Let me lay out my own tree. My tree grows ambrosia apples (best ones, less acidic). There are a few apples that appear to be the juiciest and best-looking. One holds “lawyer,” another “journalist/ columnist,” one to the left reads “love,” and to the right “career obsessed,” then “family.”

When we get to university, our tree is ripped from the earth and dropped in the most puissant ocean. 

An ocean full of grand new ideas that infuse within the roots of the fruit. Sprouting different paths to our lives.

I think we have moved away from Plath's way of thinking of only being able to choose one piece, but we are now able to choose two, maybe even three, but that's it. 

Still limited in our taste buds.  

Right now, most of us are in school. Working towards a degree to be able to get a well-paying job that allows us a little bit of comfort when we lay our heads to sleep.  

But is that job our passion? I will be honest and say ... Being a lawyer is not my passion (but also not something I don't enjoy doing). It was once just to beat my sisters in The Game of Life. The heated 1960s game that made me cry if I lost. 

I always did the same strategy: pay the $100k to go to university, pick the lawyer (which made $120k), choose the family path and retire in a millionaire estate.  

I took an actual board game and turned it into a real-life plan.  

But there is another side to this idea: “Our jobs can simply be jobs and then we have our passions on the side.” 

It’s a different way to look at our tree. We can bite into a career but also nibble on our passion for dessert.  

“Your job isn't everything. It doesn't have to be your whole life, whole personality, you can just clock in and clock out and have [the] life that is important to you be outside of work,” said one of my friends. 

We have 168 hours a week. If you work 40 hours a week and sleep 8 hours every night, we still have 72 hours to do whatever our hearts desire.  

Perhaps what we need to do is cut our trees down, take the bits and pieces and plant them scattered across the green terrain. Never choosing, always growing.  

I do not think a conclusion would be suitable for such a topic.

 I think many things can be true. There are 8.3 billion people in the world. Time, jobs and passions, which are all man-made and can be taken and discarded at any point within our lives.  

As someone once told me, “I have a plan, but I'm not set to it. If I see something that opens my eyes, I will follow it. But I also don't want to think about that."

All you truly and realistically need is to believe in whatever tree you are growing. Whether you want it to grow oranges or grow both apples and pears together. 

Just grow.