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I am someone who believes that it is always possible to transform. I think you truly can instruct a veteran learner, as long as the mature being is open-minded and eager for knowledge. As long as the person is ready to confess when it was wrong, and strive to be a more enlightened self.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the skill I am trying to learn, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an significant challenge, an issue I have battled against, often, for my all my days. The quest I'm on … to grow less fearful of those large arachnids. Pardon me, all the remaining arachnid species that exist; I have to be realistic about my potential for change as a human. The target inevitably is the huntsman because it is large, dominant, and the one I encounter most often. This includes on three separate occasions in the last week. Inside my home. Though unseen, but a shudder runs through me and grimacing as I type.

I doubt I’ll ever reach “enthusiast” status, but I've dedicated effort to at least achieving a standard level of composure about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders from my earliest years (in contrast to other children who are fascinated by them). Growing up, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to make sure I never had to handle any myself, but I still became hysterical 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 attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “managed” with it by standing incredibly far away, practically in the adjoining space (in case it chased me), and discharging a generous amount of insect spray toward it. The spray failed to hit the spider, but it succeeded in affecting and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, my romantic partner at the time or sharing a home with was, as a matter of course, the least afraid of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I produced frightened noises and fled the scene. If I was on my own, my method was simply to exit the space, douse the illumination and try to erase the memory of its presence before I had to enter again.

In a recent episode, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who resided within the sill, for the most part lingering. As a means to be less scared of it, I envisioned the spider as a 'girlie', a gal, one of us, just chilling in the sun and eavesdropping on us gab. It sounds extremely dumb, but it worked (somewhat). Put another way, actively deciding to become less phobic proved successful.

Regardless, I’ve tried to keep it up. I think about all the rational arguments not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I understand they prey upon things like insect pests (creatures I despise). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, benign creatures.

Alas, they do continue to scuttle like that. They move in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way conceivable. The vision of their numerous appendages transporting them at that frightening pace induces my caveman brain to go into high alert. They are said to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I maintain that multiplies when they are in motion.

Yet it is no fault of their own that they have unnerving limbs, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that taking the steps of making an effort to avoid have a visceral panic reaction and retreat when I see one, trying to remain calm and collected, and deliberately thinking about their beneficial attributes, has actually started to help.

Just because they are hairy creatures that dart around with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, does not justify they warrant my loathing, or my high-pitched vocalizations. It is possible to acknowledge when I’ve been wrong and motivated by baseless terror. I doubt I’ll ever reach the “trapping one under a cup and escorting it to the garden” phase, but you never know. A bit of time remains for this veteran of life yet.