Bart

The other day, I made a new friend. I’m not quite sure what his name was, given the fact that he was a spider, but let’s just go ahead and call him Bart.

For as long as I could remember, I had always been petrified of anything that looked like Bart, moved like Bart, or even resembled Bart. There’s just something about the multiple creepy legs that allow creatures like him to crawl in swift silence into corners of your bedroom, stalking you while you sleep. Or even within the crevices of your bathroom, watching you shower, among other things. I even had the most unpleasant experience of finding a relative of Bart’s that had lodged himself into the twist-on blade of my blender. Needless to say I was scarred, and wasn’t able to make or drink a smoothie for the rest of the week.

When I see a spider, chaos ensues. A whimper from a stifled scream escapes through my lips. While anxiety and panic begin to settle in, I helplessly call out for reinforcements (usually my brother) before proceeding to look around for an object like a book or slipper or fork to throw at it. Realizing that nobody is around to get rid of it on my behalf, I either try to smash it or get as far away from it as possible and pretend that it isn’t there before I ultimately break down into utter hysteria.

Pathetic, I know. I don’t do well with spiders.

Although I have murdered these poor things in the past due to my sheer ignorance and fear, I have always felt shame and guilt in doing so. Who the hell am I to say, “You look weird and I don’t understand you. That really scares me, so I’m going to kill you now.” How is that okay?

So finally I told myself, “No more. I cannot kill these living creatures — these souls. I will not do it again.”

Once I declared this to myself, I caught myself actually searching my house for a spider so I can put this new way of life into practice. But the more I looked, the harder it seemed to find one. So, I let it go. I put the search on hold. I’d come across a spider at some point, probably when I least expected it. That’s what they do best, anyways.

And alas a couple of weeks later, there I was, unsuspectingly walking into my bathroom when — BAM — there he was. Bart, in all his glory, was there on the mirror, enjoying himself as he lurked. My initial reaction was to bolt in the opposite direction like a child, and maybe even cry a little, but I told myself, “You will not run away from this. You will rescue your spider friend and release him back into the wild.”

I grabbed a cup and a small piece of cardboard in order to capture Bart. But of course, the bastard scurried into the corner to shield himself and I was too terrified to use the cardboard to coax him out. What if he was a jumping spider? What if he shot venom from his tiny fangs that melted your skin? I was not mentally prepared to sacrifice my hand.

So instead, there I stood for nearly half an hour talking to Bart, asking him to pretty, pretty please come out so I can take him home so we can get on with our lives. When that didn’t work, I started talking to him about other things. I asked him questions like, “Lovely weather we’re having today, eh?” and, “So what’s it like being a spider?” I guess since his mouth was so small, I couldn’t hear his answers. I even sang to him. Eventually, he evacuated his corner and surrendered himself to the cup. Perhaps it was the singing that drove him to do so.

Before I returned him to the other spiders in the bushes outside, I looked at him a bit closer while he was in the cup and thought, He’s kind of cute, I guess… I was relieved and proud of myself that I was able to peacefully get Bart back to his rightful place. I’m so glad I didn’t try to smash him. In fact, I kind of miss talking to Bart. I wanted to change the way I saw spiders, creatures that look entirely different than me with an entirely different purpose in life, and Bart helped me do that. Creatures that I know little to nothing about had scared the daylights out of me because they look creepy and have a stereotype associated with grossness, darkness, and evil. But the truth is, they’re just trying to peacefully make their living spinning their webs.

This one small triumph got me thinking. I had a weird case of deja vu, as if everything I just realized about spiders had a place somewhere else in this current world, too. Then it hit me.

The way I used to feel about spiders is the way I see many people today feeling and reacting towards other people — people that don’t look like them or talk like them or live like them. You know what I’m talking about. I know you’ve seen it, too.

In today’s world, I see racism. I see terrorism. I see intolerance and crude stereotypes. I see physical and verbal violence. I see people killing each other. But why? For what? For differences in opinion, or religion, or skin color? I wish everyone could see that we really aren’t so different underneath it all. I wish everyone remembered that we all have fears and dreams and families that we love. None of us ever asked to be born. We just kind of ended up here in some weird way. The world is our playground, and we have to learn how to play nice.

So I wonder: What goes on inside of people that makes them justify violence and hatred?

When I had my encounter with Bart, it all came together. It’s all about fear. It’s all about fear of the unknown, fear of the different. The fear of someone with darker skin, fear of someone with a thicker accent, fear of someone from a different part of the world with a different culture that is unknown to you.

I wonder how different the world would look if we got out of our comfort zones and asked questions that would help us better understand the people, cultures, and traditions that we don’t understand. When we push ourselves into that realm, we will find that the person with blonde hair and blue eyes who grew up Christian is not so different from the brown person from the Middle East or Africa who grew up Muslim, or the Vietnamese person who grew up Buddhist. When we try to see the world through another person’s eyes, we will see that fundamentally, at our core, we are more alike than we may initially realize, even with our physical differences.

I had let fear and misunderstanding drive me to harm spiders, just as fear and misunderstanding drive some people to harm each other. But when I forced myself to better understand what I was afraid of, I realized that spiders aren’t so bad, after all.