All in Due Time
The fig tree metaphor, choice paralysis, and learning to trust your own seasons
Several weeks ago, I came across a video that talked about a concept I just have not been able to get out of my head since. And I had no idea just how aligned it was in my current season of life until I actually sat down with it.
This concept, and even dilemma to some, is none other than Sylvia Plath’s fig tree metaphor from her novel The Bell Jar. While some people may have heard of this metaphor due to reading it in high school, this was my first time engaging with it.
The metaphor itself addresses what many of us can relate to when it comes to choice paralysis, the fear of missing out on our own biggest opportunities in life, and not knowing what route is “best” for us. As we imagine the potential, sometimes we get lost in the sauce and stay in that mode of potential where we end up watching our dreams wither and die while we sit there starving and wishing we had instead taken action.
While this story was new to me, the concept is not. And it’s one that I’ve been chewing on for most of my life.
As an individual, and especially as a creative, that has time and time again been in this position, I realized something really important. And that was, that figs meant to be for me grow back. After all, it’s not like the branch fully dies. Figs regrow in their appropriate season and in alignment with their growing cycles. I just needed to commit and do something before everything dies itself.
Growing up with a father 50+ years my senior, there were a lot of life lessons I learned from him early on. When I say that that man did it all, I mean it. So it was a challenge to hear how in his late 60s and now late 70s, just how disappointed he was in his life. In the choices he made, the missed opportunities, the amount of regret this man had packed away and that he was dragging along versus realizing how much he actually did in life.
This was one of the things that inspired me most about him. His capacity to live. This kind of living deeply reflects the quote “a jack of all trades is a master of none,” and is partly why I discovered the continuation of the quote... “but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
It is honourable to devote your life to just one thing, but to be well-rounded? To be a true Renaissance soul and to do it all? That in and of itself is honourable too, just in a different way when done appropriately and in a healthy way.
A prime example of this overarching theme in my current season was in regards to my desire to obtain a PhD. I wanted to officially pursue my PhD fully in 2024 and had started reaching out to academic advisors, and even professors at various universities. I was even considering studying abroad in Asia, Europe, or Canada, and really began to feel a huge pull towards British Columbia in particular.
However, immigration at the time wasn’t an option and BC was changing some of their academic regulations for their study permits. So with all those changes, I decided to put that goal on pause and focus on other things until the timing aligned better. But that pause didn’t happen in isolation. It was part of something much larger already in motion.
Fast-forward to now, and I’m realizing there’s a lot of prep work I still need to do and ideas I need to hammer out. So what are we doing in the meantime? SO much else. I moved countries and am chugging along through the immigration process, I got married, and I RESTED for a whole year after leaving my job. But that didn’t just happen. There was a build up, a process, a decision made when confronted with the fig tree years ago.
If October 2023 through a good part of 2024 was a huge season of death and slow restart, then somewhere in 2024 was where the dreaming stage began to emerge, and 2025 was the action and full hard reset. Now, 2026 is the building stage.
Throughout all of this, stepping away from a toxic relationship, then toxic job environment, then rebuilding my life 2,000+ km away, it all was in alignment with an oath and personal vow I had made with the Universe and the Void to quite literally purge everything not aligned with my highest self and potential and STRIP it from my life. And that’s what happened.
Does that mean that that fig, its branch, or the whole tree died? Not at all, in fact a better fig is currently growing in its place. Had I gone that previous route, I would’ve been working towards a PhD in IT talking about AI, which is not bad, but I would’ve been married to a subject that I wasn’t engrossed by. Whereas now, I’m pursuing a PhD focus that challenges the academic world and incorporates my biggest passion, astrology.
Instead, my personal fig tree just needed some pruning, some shaping, and in a way, a full unrooting and replanting.
When I look back at a year ago to the date, I was in such a soft, emotional, and vulnerable spot. I had just resigned from a demanding job which the environment had turned toxic. Nonetheless, I had given 4.5 years of my life to this place, to these people, to the “mission”.
I’ll never forget when I finally did resign effective immediately and called my (now) husband to tell him. He had flown down from Vancouver, BC to Texas some weeks prior and had seen just how much of a monster I had become due to the soul-sucking energy of this job, and the amount of tears I had shed due to the whole situation. And he just held me in that space. I remember calling his mother (my mother-in-law), after and the first words out of her mouth were “CONGRATULATIONS!! So, when are you moving up?”
And that question rocked my world. I sat down that night and considered the logistics. What would living up there for 6 months look like? The ticket, my bags, would my partner be open to it? Sure enough, he was, and within a week, I had my tickets booked, my packing list written, and a plan laid out in Notion. This was a moment I had been unknowingly manifesting. From a devotional oath and vow, to writing “2025 is the year I move to Canada” in 2023 and 2024 BEFORE my husband and I started dating, to counting down the days until my flight.
It honestly stuns me, how I just woke up and did it. And I look back at what some of my friends had said about the whole process. Not “oh be realistic” or “that’s crazy”. It was supportive beyond my wildest dreams in which nearly every single one of them had said “if anyone can do this kind of move and life-change, it’s you. I don’t think anyone else I know would’ve chosen this and if they had, could follow through with it like I know you can.”
I will admit, nothing made sense in the hard reset, and it took shape in ways I never anticipated. What was initially a 6 month visit turned into a full move and immigration process. I didn’t even know if I was making the right decisions with moving up here initially. Not to mention the growing pains with myself and relationship due to ALL of the changes... and yet I was doing my best to choose myself. To choose better. To pursue astrology full time. To invest in a relationship I had faith in. To build a new life in a place that fully encompassed home (not just because my person lived here but also because the land itself spoke to me in such a resonating way with deep feeling).
In this way, I genuinely chose the path of the Dreamer. The one destined for everything, all in due time.
Which is also why I’ve been working towards pulling these dreams into reality and focusing on them one step at a time to build towards my greater goals and the potential that I see. This is the part where having archetypal work and pattern recognition in my toolkit has come in handy when it comes to seeing what I can do in the present and long term, as well as taking advantage of what falls in my path along the way.
So with all of this in mind, where am I standing right now, one year later, looking at this tree?
I’m still in the fig tree, but rather than at its base wondering what fig to pick, I’m walking amongst its branches. I’m actively making decisions, picking the path with the most nutrients, like roots finding their way toward water.
And this is honestly so timely too, if Aries Season was the small spark and readjusting the starting line, Taurus Season is sitting in this energy of growing roots, worthiness, and committing to what I’ve chosen.
My fig tree isn’t done growing, and this is just one of the branches I’ve been exploring. There is still so much growing beneath the surface, and so much passion waiting to be shared with you all (in due time).
But for now, I’m happy to share things in little growth spurts as they happen, and to finally take this time to record my journey along the way.
With cosmic care,
Ollie Amauri
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