In “The Bell Jar,” Sylvia Plath has a passage where she describes dreams as figs on a fig tree. Each fig is a ripe fruit holding so many different futures. Yet, when faced with the option of choosing, she was unable to reach for one for fear of losing the others. So, in the end, she was left with rotten figs, dropped uselessly on the ground while time swiftly stole away the ripe figs from her grasp. To many people, too old is often translated as too late, and age is perceived as a trammel growing more restrictive with each year. As a child who grew up exposed to a society constantly cowering from the passage of time, I lived under a belief that I, too, must fear time. I started to perceive time as a silent death that my soul would perish before my body ever did. I subconsciously put deadlines on my dreams, telling myself that my “golden age” was disappearing fast and that if I didn’t achieve my dreams before my peak was over, then my dreams would rot away like overripe figs. I began to dread each birthday, feeling like I failed for not having done more to make up for the fact that I had aged another year. However, I am here to tell you that as beautiful as that passage by Slyvia Plath is, our dreams are not restricted by the ephemeral nature of our physical world. As long as you retain your belief and will to chase your dreams, it is never too late.
This revelation came to me in the form of my beautifully resilient mother. As a young woman, my mother had always wanted to be a producer for shows. Yet as time went on and with meeting my father, her dream began to be lost amidst the hectic progression of her life. Soon, she began to put aside the version of herself that she imagined working on show sets and overseeing production and changed her life to fulfill her new role as a stay-at-home mother to me and my sister. Nevertheless, that dream stayed growing on that fig tree that she held inside of her. And last year, my mother started an endeavor that would allow her to finally harvest the fig that she cultivated all these years: she made her own short film.
The film had initially started off as my own. I had become aware of a community service opportunity to create a short video to encourage donations to an establishment that helped foster families and decided to volunteer. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, the project was halted with only a short script I had made based on a young boy’s experiences in foster care. I had forgotten about it until my mother brought it up in conversation a few weeks later. She urged me to pursue this script, but along with the other extracurriculars and schoolwork I had, it was impossible to finish the film by the set deadline, so I told her I couldn’t do it. I thought that would be the end of it but was proven wrong a few days later when my mother informed me that she had enrolled in a night class at UCLA to learn how to make a short film; she was going to be the one to bring my script to life. So, for the next few months, my mom went to class every night on Wednesday and improved, learning more about the film industry, camera angles, etc. Then, on her own personal time, she revised the script and contacted film crews to start the production process, and in a few months, my mom did what she set out to do and finished the film. I remember asking my mom as she was working on editing the movie why she was so ardent to make this film since this was all out of the blue to me. That is when she told me the very thing that spurred me to write this article: “Because as I raised you and watched you grow and start to chase your dreams, it made me realize that I could do that too. That it was not too late for me to chase new dreams.”
No truer words have been said. We have been conditioned to believe that there is an expiration date branded onto our soul, that we are ticking time bombs just waiting until we are past the years where we can truly live. Yet, who is to determine when that date is? Everyone, no matter what age, reserves the right to wish and yearn for more. Seeing my mother, who not only had the burden of her own life but the lives of her two children on her shoulder, pursue her dream with such fervor and passion opened my eyes to the infinite possibilities that sheer motivation can manifest. The beauty of life is that it is a ceaseless cycle. Although some of the figs my mother had when she was younger may have died, she continued to find new figs filled with endless opportunities, just waiting for her to reach out and grab one for herself. So now, instead of crying over the time passing, I welcome it — spending my birthdays with joy rather than regret — as I now know that no matter what stage of life you are in, it is never too late to dream.
