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I maintain the conviction that it is never too late to transform. My view is you absolutely are able to instruct a veteran learner, on the condition that the mature being is receptive and willing to learn. As long as the old dog is ready to confess when it was in error, and endeavor to transform into a better dog.

Well, admittedly, the metaphor applies to me. And the lesson I am attempting to master, although I am decrepit? It is an important one, a feat I have struggled with, often, for my entire life. I have been trying … to grow less fearful of huntsman spiders. Pardon me, all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I run into regularly. Encompassing three times in the recent past. Within my dwelling. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing at the very thought as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but my project has been at least achieving a standard level of composure about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to confront any myself, but I still freaked out if one was visibly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and trying to deal with a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, nearly crossing the threshold (for fear that it ran after me), and discharging a generous amount of insect spray toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it did reach and disturb everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, my romantic partner at the time or sharing a home with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore in charge of dealing with it, while I made whimpers of distress and ran away. In moments of solitude, my strategy was simply to exit the space, plunge the room into darkness and try to ignore its existence before I had to enter again.

Not long ago, I visited a friend’s house where there was a very large huntsman who made its home in the sill, mostly just stationary. To be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a female entity, a girlie, part of the group, just relaxing in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. Admittedly, it appears extremely dumb, but it worked (to some degree). Or, actively deciding to become less scared did the trick.

Whatever the case, I've made an effort to continue. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I understand they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (creatures I despise). It is well-established they are one of the planet's marvelous, benign creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to scuttle like that. They propel themselves in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way possible. The vision of their many legs transporting them at that terrible speed induces my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I am convinced that multiplies when they are in motion.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have unnerving limbs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – perhaps even more so. I have discovered that employing the techniques of working to prevent instantly leap out of my body and run away when I see one, working to keep composed and breathing steadily, and intentionally reflecting about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that scuttle about with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, doesn’t mean they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the “catching one in a Tupperware container and relocating it outdoors” stage, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains for this old dog yet.