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I maintain the conviction that it is never too late to transform. I believe you truly can instruct a veteran learner, on the condition that the mature being is receptive and eager for knowledge. So long as the person is prepared to acknowledge when it was in error, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, the metaphor applies to me. And the trick I am trying to learn, even though I am decrepit? It is an major undertaking, something I have battled against, often, for my all my days. My ongoing effort … to grow less fearful of the common huntsman. Pardon me, all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my possible growth as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is imposing, commanding, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Encompassing on three separate occasions in the previous seven days. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I’m shaking my head and grimacing as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but my project has been at least becoming Normal about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (unlike other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had plenty of male siblings around to guarantee I never had to handle any directly, but I still became hysterical if one was visibly in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the living room surface. I “dealt” with it by standing incredibly far away, practically in the adjoining space (for fear that it ran after me), and emptying half a bottle of pesticide toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or living with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders in our pairing, and therefore in charge of managing the intruder, while I emitted low keening sounds and ran away. When finding myself alone, my tactic was simply to vacate the area, plunge the room into darkness and try to forget about its presence before I had to re-enter.

Not long ago, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a very large huntsman who made its home in the sill, mostly just hanging out. As a means to be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a 'girlie', a girlie, in our circle, just chilling in the sun and listening to us chat. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (a little bit). Put another way, actively deciding to become less phobic worked.

Be that as it may, I’ve tried to keep it up. I reflect upon all the sensible justifications not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I understand they eat things like buzzing nuisances (creatures I despise). It is well-established they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the most terrifying and borderline immoral way conceivable. The appearance of their multiple limbs carrying them at that frightening pace causes my ancient psyche to go into high alert. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I maintain that increases exponentially when they move.

However it isn’t their fault that they have frightening appendages, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I’ve found that taking the steps of trying not to instantly leap out of my body and run away when I see one, trying to remain calm and collected, and consciously focusing about their positive qualities, has actually started to help.

Just because they are hairy creatures that move hastily extremely quickly in a way that invades my dreams, is no reason for they merit my intense dislike, or my shrieks of terror. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and motivated by irrational anxiety. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” level, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains left in this old dog yet.