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I am someone who believes that it is never too late to change. I believe you truly can instruct a veteran learner, as long as the mature being is receptive and willing to learn. So long as the individual in question is willing to admit when it was wrong, and work to become a more enlightened self.

OK yes, I am that seasoned creature. And the lesson I am attempting to master, despite the fact that I am set in my ways? It is an important one, something I have battled against, repeatedly, for my all my days. I have been trying … to grow less fearful of the common huntsman. Pardon me, all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be grounded about my capacity for development as a human. It also has to be the huntsman because it is sizeable, in charge, and the one I run into regularly. This includes three times in the previous seven days. Within my dwelling. You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head at the very thought as I type.

I'm skeptical I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but my project has been at least becoming a baseline of normalcy about them.

A deep-seated fear of spiders since I was a child (in contrast to other children who find them delightful). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to make sure I never had to confront any personally, but I still became hysterical if one was clearly in the immediate vicinity as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family slumbering on, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the lounge-room wall. I “managed” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (for fear that it chased me), and emptying a significant portion of insect spray toward it. The chemical cloud missed the spider, but it did reach and annoy everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whomever I was in a relationship with or living with was, as a matter of course, the most courageous of spiders out of the two of us, and therefore tasked with managing the intruder, while I produced whimpers of distress and ran away. If I was on my own, my strategy was simply to leave the room, douse the illumination and try to ignore its being before I had to return.

Recently, I stayed at a pal's residence where there was a very large huntsman who lived in the casement, mostly just lingering. In order to be less fearful, I conceptualized the spider as a female entity, a gal, part of the group, just chilling in the sun and listening to us gab. It sounds rather silly, but it had an impact (somewhat). Or, the deliberate resolution to become less phobic did the trick.

Be that as it may, I've endeavored to maintain this practice. I think about all the logical reasons not to be scared. I am aware huntsman spiders won’t harm me. I understand they prey upon things like insect pests (the bane of my existence). It is well-established they are one of nature’s beautiful, harmless-to-humans creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They travel in the utterly horrifying and somehow offensive way conceivable. The vision of their multiple limbs propelling them at that alarming velocity induces my primordial instincts to go into high alert. They claim to only have a standard octet of limbs, but I believe that multiplies when they get going.

But it cannot be blamed on them that they have frightening appendages, and they have the same privilege to be where I am – possibly a greater claim. I’ve found that implementing the strategy of working to prevent immediately exit my own skin and run away when I see one, working to keep still and breathing, and deliberately thinking about their positive qualities, has proven somewhat effective.

Simply due to the reality that they are fuzzy entities that move hastily with startling speed in a way that haunts my sleep, does not justify they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. I am willing to confess when I’ve been wrong and motivated by baseless terror. It is uncertain I’ll ever attain the “catching one in a Tupperware container and escorting it to the garden” level, but you never know. A bit of time remains left in this veteran of life yet.