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I firmly hold the belief that it is forever an option to transform. I believe you can in fact instruct a veteran learner, as long as the experienced individual is willing and eager for knowledge. Provided that the person is willing to admit when it was in error, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, the metaphor applies to me. And the lesson I am working to acquire, even though I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have grappled with, frequently, for my all my days. I have been trying … to grow less fearful 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. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is sizeable, in charge, and the one I run into regularly. Including a trio of instances in the recent past. Within my dwelling. Though unseen, but a shudder runs through me at the very thought as I type.

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

I have been terrified of spiders since I was a child (unlike other children who adore them). In my formative years, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to handle any myself, but I still became hysterical if one was visibly in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family still asleep, and trying to deal with a spider that had crawled on to the lounge-room wall. I “managed” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (for fear that it pursued me), and spraying a generous amount of pesticide toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and disturb everyone in my house.

In my adult life, whoever I was dating or living with was, by default, the least afraid of spiders between us, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I produced low keening sounds and ran away. When finding myself alone, my method was simply to exit the space, plunge the room into darkness and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to return.

Recently, I was a guest at a companion's home where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who made its home in the window frame, for the most part lingering. In order to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a one of the girls, one of us, just chilling in the sun and overhearing us gab. Admittedly, it appears rather silly, but it was effective (a little bit). Put another way, actively deciding to become less phobic proved successful.

Whatever the case, I’ve tried to keep it up. I reflect upon all the rational arguments not to be scared. I am aware 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 nature’s beautiful, benign creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to walk like that. They propel themselves in the utterly horrifying and almost unjust way possible. The appearance of their many legs transporting them at that terrible speed causes my caveman brain to go into high alert. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I believe that triples when they get going.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have scary legs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I’ve found that employing the techniques of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and flee when I see one, attempting to stay calm and collected, and intentionally reflecting about their positive qualities, has actually started to help.

Just because they are hairy creatures that move hastily with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my shrieks of terror. It is possible to acknowledge when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to the “scooping one into plasticware and taking it outside” stage, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years within this old dog yet.