The Philosophy of Choice
What the existentialists can teach us about living with too many choices.
“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.”
—Sylvia Plath (From The Bell Jar)
Sylvia Plath was only 30 when she took her own life. In the too-short time she was here, Plath wrote some of the most important poetry and novels of the 20th century. She let readers into her head. She extricated the messy details of a single chaotic mind and gave them form—an architecture whose definition allowed the reader access. In doing so, she related the turmoil of both her own life, and a more general cultural condition that persists to this day. Plath’s writing often looks inward, but its concerns are never very different from the concerns of her readers. Though we may articulate it far less keenly, all of us understand the pain of modern life. We, too, can be brought low by the infinite possibilities of our world.
