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I am someone who believes that it is forever an option to evolve. I believe you truly can instruct a veteran learner, as long as the experienced individual is open-minded and eager for knowledge. So long as the individual in question is prepared to acknowledge when it was in error, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, I am the old dog. And the skill I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am a creature of habit? It is an major undertaking, an issue I have struggled with, repeatedly, for my entire life. The quest I'm on … to become less scared of huntsman spiders. Pardon me, all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be realistic about my potential for change as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is imposing, dominant, and the one I run into regularly. Including three times in the recent past. Inside my home. Though unseen, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but my project has been at least achieving Normal about them.

An intense phobia regarding spiders from my earliest years (unlike other children who are fascinated by them). During my childhood, I had ample brothers around to guarantee I never had to confront any directly, but I still freaked out if one was clearly in the general area as me. I have a strong memory of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and facing the ordeal of a spider that had crawled on to the lounge-room wall. I “managed” with it by retreating to a remote corner, almost into the next room (in case it chased me), and spraying a significant portion of bug repellent toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it managed to annoy and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or living with was, as a matter of course, the least afraid of spiders between us, and therefore responsible for managing the intruder, while I produced low keening sounds and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my tactic was simply to vacate the area, plunge the room into darkness and try to forget about its being before I had to return.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a very large huntsman who lived in the casement, primarily hanging out. In order to be more comfortable with its presence, I conceptualized the spider as a her, a one of the girls, part of the group, just relaxing in the sun and eavesdropping on us gab. Admittedly, it appears rather silly, but it worked (to some degree). Alternatively, actively deciding to become less scared proved successful.

Be that as it may, I've made an effort to continue. I contemplate all the sensible justifications not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I recognize they eat things like buzzing nuisances (my mortal enemies). It is well-established they are one of the planet's marvelous, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to move like that. They propel themselves in the utterly horrifying and almost unjust way conceivable. The vision of their numerous appendages carrying them at that terrible speed triggers my ancient psyche to kick into overdrive. They claim to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I am convinced that triples when they get going.

But it isn’t their fault that they have unnerving limbs, and they have just as much right to be where I am – perhaps even more so. My experience has shown that taking the steps of trying not to immediately exit my own skin and retreat when I see one, trying to remain calm and collected, and deliberately thinking about their positive qualities, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are hairy creatures that dart around with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, doesn’t mean they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by baseless terror. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and relocating it outdoors” stage, but miracles happen. Some life is left left in this seasoned learner yet.