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I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to transform. My view is you truly can train a seasoned creature, provided that the old dog is receptive and willing to learn. So long as the individual in question is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and endeavor to transform into a more enlightened self.

Well, admittedly, the metaphor applies to me. And the lesson I am trying to learn, even though I am decrepit? It is an significant challenge, something I have grappled with, repeatedly, for my whole existence. My ongoing effort … to develop a calmer response toward those large arachnids. Pardon me, all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my potential for change as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I run into regularly. This includes on three separate occasions in the previous seven days. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but my project has been at least becoming a standard level of composure about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (as opposed to other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to engage with any myself, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the same room as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had made its way onto the living room surface. I “managed” with it by standing incredibly far away, nearly crossing the threshold (lest it pursued me), and spraying a generous amount of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or sharing a home with was, as a matter of course, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I made low keening sounds and beat a hasty retreat. In moments of solitude, my tactic was simply to leave the room, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its existence before I had to re-enter.

Recently, I was a guest at a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who made its home in the sill, primarily stationary. As a means to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a gal, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and overhearing us yap. Admittedly, it appears extremely dumb, but it had an impact (somewhat). Put another way, making a conscious choice to become less phobic worked.

Be that as it may, I've made an effort to continue. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (creatures I despise). It is well-established they are one of the planet's marvelous, benign creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way imaginable. The vision of their multiple limbs propelling them at that terrible speed triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They claim to only have eight legs, but I maintain that multiplies when they are in motion.

But it is no fault of their own that they have unnerving limbs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I have discovered that employing the techniques of trying not to have a visceral panic reaction and flee when I see one, working to keep still and breathing, and consciously focusing about their beneficial attributes, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are furry beings that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, does not justify they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and driven by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and taking it outside” stage, but one can't be sure. Some life is left left in this old dog yet.