The Grass Is Greenest Where You Water It

The case for picking your fig and sticking to it

*The next Sex Talks, a summer special featuring comedian and author Sofie Hagen, is taking place on July 30th at The London Edition. Purchase your ticket here.*

Of late I have felt a notable shift occur in me with regards to how I think about the options presented to me in my life.

In my twenties, I was perpetually enamoured by the infinite possibility of the unknown. I found it hard to sit still and harder still to stick to anything, or anyone, for very long because I was always obsessing over whatever shiny object was ‘over there’. I had an insatiable yearning for newness, and promptly chased novelty with the alacrity of the religious zealot in pursuit of their Messiah. 

As my good friend recently reminded me, while we strolled through Borough Market on a balmy summer’s eve, I was more likely to go on holiday with a near stranger, someone I’d just met at a jazz bar in New York, or a potential love interest introduced to me at a friend’s wedding, than I was to travel with friends. While the idea of a group holiday felt stifling and dull, the unknown terrain of a trip with a stranger symbolised endless possibility. 

But now I am older, and wiser, and a lot less tolerant perhaps of things I don’t like, I find myself less attracted to novelty than to the possibility of what might be achieved and experienced with a little more consistency. As my mum has taken to reminding me often: “The grass is greenest where you water it.” 

It has become my new mantra. 

After all, the infinite possibility of the unknown offers endless potential, yes, but potential amounts to nothing if you never stop chasing the conveyor belt of moving objects in order to nurture and cultivate whatever is in front of you. And this is as true of relationships, both platonic and romantic, as it is of work and hobbies.

Speaking on Elizabeth’s Day’s How To Fail podcast recently, author Salman Rushdie described the 13-years or so he spent trying to find his way as a writer. He left university in 1968, he explained, but it wasn’t until 1981 that his career-making book, Midnight Children, was published, following his commercially unsuccessful debut novel, Grimus. The book advance he received for the former was, he explained, around £800, which would equate to roughly £8000 in today’s world - hardly enough to live off of then as now.

But Rushdie persevered and, as we know, went on to sell millions of copies of his books worldwide. Speaking to The Big Issue in 2022, he noted that if he could go back in time he’d tell his younger self “well done for sticking at it.

“The idea you have twelve years of your life trying to do something without any guarantee you’ll be any good or have any success, that takes tremendous desire and will.”

Desire and will. 

Consistency and commitment. 

Throughout my life I have often felt less like Rushdie and more like the protagonist in Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ as she sits beneath the fig tree, unable to decide which fig to pluck.  

“I saw my life branching out before me,” Plath writes, “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 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.”

In wanting everything, she ended up with nothing, bar a pool of shrivelled figs and missed opportunities gathered accusatorially beneath her.

By comparison, Rushdie picked his fig with certainty and resolve so that even in the face of rejection and failure he persisted, doggedly, to reach for the one juicy piece of fruit he knew he wanted. In the end, it paid dividends. 

So now, when I look up at the fig tree that is my life at 32, and by dint of habit find myself wondering ‘am I really reaching for the right fig?’, I think of Rushdie and I think of Plath, as I remind myself that, more often than not, success comes by way of a decision made, a plot of land picked, a patch of grass tended to with care.

*The next Sex Talks, a summer special featuring comedian and author Sofie Hagen, is taking place on July 30th at The London Edition. Purchase your ticket here.*