I have always had many interests. When asked what I wanted to major in, my answer was always too long and some would even say unrealistic. My hobbies and likes ranged from art to sports to science to history to technology to math and so on. And I’ve never really seen this quality as a negative. Rather, I felt that it made me a more well-rounded individual.

That is, until my brother hit me with a hugely disappointing wake up call.

So the other day, I was talking to my brother about the various things that I wanted to learn how to do. I told him that I felt like I didn’t have enough time to dedicate myself to such a wide array of topics. I spontaneously purchased well known books about investment banking and finance, while also downloading several applications on my phone that would teach me about coding and web design. I bought and downloaded Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator, hoping to master photo and video editing. And I just recently ordered a book that will assist in teaching myself French.

And these are just the things that occurred to me in the past week.

While venting to my brother about all of my diverse ambitions, he interrupts me and pulls up a YouTube video of a scene of the show Master of None with Aziz Ansari. The scene was simply a narration of a passage from a famous Sylvia Plath book called the Bell Jar. I assume that some of you are familiar with Plath’s Fig Tree quote, but for those of you that are not, it is incredibly depressing although ultimately eye-opening.

Here is the narration from Master of None:

And here is the actual quote:

“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.”

So my general take-away is that we each have the potential to do countless things with our lives. There are so many different paths that we can choose to take. The possibilities are literally endless. However, if we waste our time wanting more than we can have, starving ourselves in indecisiveness, all of the opportunities and possibilities will fade away one by one.

Reading about the fig tree, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a basic Buddhist tenant about happiness. The gist of it is that happiness can only truly be attained when one ceases to have desire. As long as you want and desire things in life, you will never be satisfied.

Now, the thing about these philosophies, whether it be the Fig Tree or Buddhism, is that they seem to portray ambition and self-improvement in a negative light. And I, for one, have never seen a problem with a motivated and go-getter attitude. Obviously, I know that my brother showed me this so that I would shut up and stop annoying him with all of my autodidact related plans. But I’ll admit that it did get me thinking about how not to starve myself in the midst of so many potential routes.

So instead of letting my brother, Sylvia Plath, Aziz Ansari, and an entire philosophy of life discourage me from attempting to learn everything that interests me, I chose to live like this by my own interpretation. I decided that this all meant that, in very cliché terms, life is short, and opportunities are fleeting. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish everything that you could ever desire in your life, but that should just provide you with that much more motivation to use your time wisely and most importantly, PRIORITIZE.

It doesn’t matter that I want to learn to do a million things, as long as I know which of those million are more important to me and which I want to dedicate more of my time and energy towards. I might not be able to end up with every single fig on the tree, but I could very realistically entertain a large portion of my interests, as long as I stop wasting precious time with things that won’t better me as an individual.

Even though the Fig Tree quote can seem a little scary and even depressing, it is also fairly comforting to think that there are so many different turns that our lives can take. And the path we end up on is not up to fate or destiny, it is up to us—our choices and ultimately our motivation and hard work. So, although opportunities are ephemeral in their nature, our dedication to succeed in whatever path we choose will always open new doors. Some figs may shrivel up and fall to the ground, but others will always grow in their place.