Quantum Mechanics
...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...
And so I sit in the crotch of this fig tree, assessing its fruits one by one. Some fell to the ground by storm, some get wounded by beetles, some simply too heavy for the tree branch to carry. I sit and watch the fallen fruits decay into earth, hoping each rotting fig will birth another tree-- a tree that carries only one fig, one tremendous and extraordinary fig. I would rather be nothing than be small.
Then I realize that I was the tree. And things started to look less glum. Everything that is possible happens. Every fig growing out of me happens. In another universe I have a husband and a happy home and children, another I am Aristotle and Peter Singer, and another fig is architect and interior designer, another is homicide detective, and one that is the British countryside... All versions of me is happening, with each decision there is a parallel universe created. How glad I am that every fig gets a life.. I wonder which fig will be the last to fall, which fig will be my defining fruit in this lifetime. I'm the tree that sits without haste or regret.
