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I maintain the conviction that it is forever an option to transform. I think you absolutely are able to teach an old dog new tricks, as long as the old dog is receptive and ready for growth. So long as the person is ready to confess when it was mistaken, and endeavor to transform into a improved version.

Alright, I confess, I am that seasoned creature. And the lesson I am working to acquire, even though I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, a feat I have grappled with, often, for my entire life. I have been trying … to become less scared of the common huntsman. 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 sizeable, in charge, and the one I run into regularly. This includes a trio of instances in the recent past. Inside my home. You can’t see me, but a shudder runs through me and grimacing as I type.

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

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (unlike other children who find them delightful). 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 clearly in the general area as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and trying to deal with a spider that had ascended the living room surface. I “handled” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, practically in the adjoining space (in case it pursued me), and discharging half a bottle of insect spray toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.

As I got older, whomever I was in a relationship with or cohabiting with was, as a matter of course, the bravest of spiders between us, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I emitted low keening sounds and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my tactic was simply to leave the room, douse the illumination and try to ignore its existence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I was a guest at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the window frame, primarily hanging out. To be less scared of it, I imagined the spider as a her, a one of the girls, one of us, just lounging in the sun and overhearing us chat. It sounds extremely dumb, but it was effective (somewhat). Put another way, actively deciding to become more fearless proved successful.

Be that as it may, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I contemplate all the logical reasons not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders are not dangerous to humans. I recognize they eat things like insect pests (the bane of my existence). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, benign creatures.

Yet, regrettably, they do continue to walk like that. They move in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way conceivable. The vision of their many legs transporting them at that terrible speed induces my primordial instincts to go into high alert. They are said to only have the typical arachnid arrangement, but I am convinced that increases exponentially when they get going.

Yet it isn’t their fault that they have unnerving limbs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – if not more. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of trying not to have a visceral panic reaction and run away when I see one, attempting to stay composed and breathing steadily, and deliberately thinking about their good points, has actually started to help.

Just because they are furry beings that move hastily extremely quickly in a way that causes me nocturnal distress, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my shrieks of terror. I can admit when I’ve been wrong and fueled by irrational anxiety. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the “scooping one into plasticware and escorting it to the garden” level, but you never know. Some life is left within this old dog yet.