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I am someone who believes that it is never too late to evolve. My view is you can in fact train a seasoned creature, provided that the mature being is willing and eager for knowledge. Provided that the individual in question is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and endeavor to transform into a more enlightened self.

Alright, I confess, I am the old dog. And the lesson I am attempting to master, even though I am a creature of habit? It is an significant challenge, a feat I have battled against, often, for my whole existence. My ongoing effort … to become less scared of those large arachnids. Apologies to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be realistic about my capacity for development as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is sizeable, dominant, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. This includes on three separate occasions in the previous seven days. Within my dwelling. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I’ve been working on at least becoming 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 plenty of male siblings around to make sure I never had to handle any personally, but I still became hysterical if one was obviously in the general area 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 ascended the lounge-room wall. I “handled” with it by retreating to a remote corner, practically in the adjoining space (in case it pursued me), and discharging a significant portion of bug repellent toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it managed to annoy and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whoever I was dating or living with was, by default, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore responsible for dealing with it, while I made frightened noises and beat a hasty retreat. When finding myself alone, my method was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its being before I had to re-enter.

Recently, I visited a pal's residence where there was a very large huntsman who resided within the sill, for the most part hanging out. As a means to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a 'girlie', a one of the girls, in our circle, just chilling in the sun and eavesdropping on us yap. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (somewhat). Or, making a conscious choice to become less scared worked.

Regardless, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. I know huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they consume things like buzzing nuisances (my mortal enemies). I am cognizant they are one of the planet's marvelous, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Unfortunately, however, they do continue to move like that. They travel in the most terrifying and almost unjust way possible. The vision of their numerous appendages carrying them at that frightening pace induces my ancient psyche to kick into overdrive. They claim to only have eight legs, but I believe that triples when they get going.

However it isn’t their fault that they have frightening appendages, and they have just as much right to be where I am – if not more. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of working to prevent have a visceral panic reaction and run away when I see one, working to keep still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their positive qualities, has proven somewhat effective.

The mere fact that they are furry beings that dart around extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, is no reason for they deserve my hatred, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when my reactions have been misguided and motivated by baseless terror. I’m not sure I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and taking it outside” level, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years left in this old dog yet.