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I am someone who believes that it is always possible to evolve. I think you can in fact train a seasoned creature, provided that the experienced individual is willing and eager for knowledge. So long as the individual in question is ready to confess when it was in error, and strive to be a better dog.

OK yes, the metaphor applies to me. And the skill I am working to acquire, although I am decrepit? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have grappled with, frequently, for my all my days. My ongoing effort … to develop a calmer response toward the common huntsman. My regrets to all the other spiders that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my capacity for development as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is large, commanding, and the one I encounter most often. Including three times in the previous seven days. Within my dwelling. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing at the very thought as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “admirer” status, but my project has been at least attaining a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders dating back to my youth (unlike other children who adore them). In my formative years, I had plenty of male siblings around to ensure I never had to engage with any directly, but I still panicked if one was visibly in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had crawled on to the living room surface. I “managed” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (in case it chased me), and discharging a generous amount of bug repellent toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and irritate everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whomever I was in a relationship with or living with was, by default, the bravest of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with dealing with it, while I produced whimpers of distress and ran away. In moments of solitude, my method was simply to exit the space, plunge the room into darkness and try to forget about its presence before I had to enter again.

Recently, I stayed at a companion's home where there was a notably big huntsman who resided within the casement, primarily lingering. In order to be less scared of it, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a gal, one of us, just chilling in the sun and listening to us gab. It sounds rather silly, but it worked (to some degree). Put another way, the deliberate resolution to become less phobic proved successful.

Whatever the case, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I think about all the sensible justifications not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I know they consume things like flies and mosquitoes (my mortal enemies). I know they are one of nature’s beautiful, non-threatening to people creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to scuttle like that. They propel themselves in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way imaginable. The sight of their many legs transporting them at that alarming velocity causes my ancient psyche to go into high alert. They ostensibly only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I maintain that multiplies when they move.

However it cannot be blamed on them that they have scary legs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I have discovered that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid instantly leap out of my body and flee when I see one, attempting to stay composed and breathing steadily, and intentionally reflecting about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Just because they are hairy creatures that dart around at an alarming rate in a way that haunts my sleep, is no reason for they warrant my loathing, or my shrieks of terror. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by irrational anxiety. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and relocating it outdoors” phase, but miracles happen. A bit of time remains for this veteran of life yet.