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I firmly hold the belief that it is never too late to evolve. I think you can in fact instruct a veteran learner, as long as the mature being is receptive and eager for knowledge. So long as the individual in question is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and strive to be a better dog.

Alright, I confess, the metaphor applies to me. And the trick I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have struggled with, often, for my whole existence. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of the common huntsman. Apologies to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is imposing, commanding, and the one I encounter most often. Including three times in the previous seven days. Inside my home. Though unseen, but a shudder runs through me at the very thought as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least achieving a baseline of normalcy about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders from my earliest years (unlike other children who adore them). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to make sure I never had to engage with any personally, but I still panicked if one was clearly in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and attempting to manage a spider that had crawled on to the family room partition. I “managed” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, nearly crossing the threshold (for fear that it pursued me), and discharging half a bottle of pesticide toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it managed to annoy and disturb everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or cohabiting with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders in our pairing, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I made low keening sounds and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my method was simply to exit the space, turn off the light and try to ignore its being before I had to enter again.

Recently, I was a guest at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the casement, for the most part hanging out. To be more comfortable with its presence, I imagined the spider as a 'girlie', a girlie, part of the group, just lounging in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. It sounds rather silly, but it worked (to some degree). Or, actively deciding to become less scared proved successful.

Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I understand they eat things like buzzing nuisances (the bane of my existence). I am cognizant they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to scuttle like that. They travel in the deeply alarming and somehow offensive way imaginable. The vision of their many legs propelling them at that alarming velocity induces my caveman brain to kick into overdrive. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I believe that increases exponentially when they get going.

But it is no fault of their own that they have frightening appendages, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that implementing the strategy of working to prevent have a visceral panic reaction and retreat when I see one, attempting to stay composed and breathing steadily, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

The mere fact that they are hairy creatures that dart around extremely quickly in a way that invades my dreams, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. I am willing to confess when my reactions have been misguided and fueled by irrational anxiety. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” stage, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years for this old dog yet.