I normally do my quick book reviews on my yearly review pages, and No Cure For Being Human does appear on the 2022 page and The Bell Jar is a classic I’ve read a few times in my life and used portions of in my writing classes. However, when I encounter a book with some share-worthy quotes, I like to give the book its own post. You can see other posts with favorite quotes here.

The books are nothing alike, but a passage in Bowler’s memoir reminded me of a passage I’ve always liked in The Bell Jar.

I read No Cure For Being Human in one sitting. Bowler, a professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School, writes about getting a devastating cancer diagnosis in her 30s and surviving despite all odds. The book is a quick, poignant read.

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 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 those 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. 

~ The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, 1963

It’s a truth we must keep learning as we go and accept otherwise it becomes impossible to make choices. Sometimes by our own control–choosing a school, a job, a life partner, etc–we close off other paths. Sometimes not by our control–our own sickness, the sickness of a loved one, an devastating accident–certain paths are closed off to us. Either way, mourning the paths left behind make it impossible to move forward. That’s what strikes me in both of these passages.

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